The United States is “very focused on ensuring” that Russia is unable to develop new liquefied natural gas projects, one of the country’s top diplomats has said.
The remarks by Geoffrey Pyatt, US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources, at the FT’s Commodities Summit refer to the Russian Arctic LNG 2 project, led by the private company Novatek.
The United States subjected the flagship project to direct sanctions in November, effectively preventing its stakeholders from obtaining LNG. However, Novatek is also developing another large project in the Murmansk region.
“Our goal is to ensure that Arctic LNG 2 is dead in the water,” Pyatt said, adding that while he cannot predict future sanctions actions, “we are very focused on ensuring that Russia is not able to develop new [LNG] projects in order to [redirect] the gas he had previously sent to Europe.”