Gazprom was expelled from Europe. Now, the US wants to “kill” Russia’s biggest liquefied natural gas project, as one senior official put it. The case is piquant because the Russian company behind it, which helped Europe with deliveries last year, has strong global allies and, interestingly, does not finance Putin’s war machine at all. Why is the US so obsessed with this?
The series of Western sanctions against Russia, which, contrary to expectations, are far from working and being effective, are currently taking on a new and remarkable form. And because it is sometimes unclear how the current initiative is intended to harm the Kremlin and hamper its war activities, the suspicion arises that it could have more to do with eliminating unwanted economic competition.
There is talk of new sanctions against the Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector, which saved Europe from new energy supply shortages last winter after gas volumes supplied by the Gazprom group through pipelines were drastically reduced . Specifically, last week, the US imposed sanctions on the Arctic LNG-2 project, managed by the company Novatek. In this sense, we are working closely with partner countries from the G7 states, said Geoffrey Pyatt, advisor to the Secretary of State for Energy, in the Senate Foreign Policy Committee: “Our goal is to end this project”.
Jamal gas paradise
Arctic LNG-2 is Novatek and Russia’s largest liquefied natural gas project on the gas-rich Arctic Yamal Peninsula. With great ambitions for the global market.