US vows to 'kill' Russia's new energy project
(Baonghean.vn) - The US State Department said Washington wants to ensure that Novatek's Arctic LNG 2 project in the Arctic will be "dead in the bud".
According to Russia's RT news agency, senior US State Department official Geoffrey Pyatt said Washington is aiming to prevent the development of Russia's energy industry, including a new liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in the Arctic.
Speaking at a Financial Times summit on April 8, Mr Pyatt said the US was specifically targeting the Arctic LNG 2 project in Russia’s northern Yamal Region, which is being developed by private energy giant Novatek.
“Our goal is to make sure Arctic LNG 2 is dead in the water,” Pyatt, who is currently the US assistant secretary of state for energy resources, told the British newspaper. “We are very focused on making sure that Russia cannot develop new projects to divert gas that it has previously shipped to Europe.”
The US has imposed a number of economic restrictions on Arctic LNG 2, the most recent set of measures announced last November.
Cutting Europe off from cheap Russian pipeline gas has been a key part of the West’s retaliation since Moscow launched its military campaign in Ukraine in 2022. While US LNG producers have a large market share, Russian gas continues to flow into some EU member states.
The EU has ramped up its purchases of Russian LNG in 2023 to make up for the shortfall in pipeline gas, with LNG now accounting for 15% of the market, up from around 8% before 2022, according to Reuters estimates. Russia’s share of pipeline gas was previously 37%.
Moscow sees the Ukraine conflict as part of a US-led proxy war against Russia, one of whose goals is to block economic competition. Russian officials argue that the welfare of Europeans has been sacrificed by Washington in the process.
The loss of the European market has prompted Moscow to shift its focus to pipelines connecting major gas fields to customers in Asia, primarily China.