Russian gas sales to China would not harm US, energy secretary says

[WASHINGTON] Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Friday (Sep 5) that he is not worried that any Russian sales of gas to China would harm US exporters of the fuel.

Russia and China gave their blessing earlier this week to a gas pipeline called Power of Siberia 2, underscoring Chinese President Xi Jinping’s disregard for Western demands that he row back from a deepening partnership with Moscow.

Wright touted the Trump administration’s focus on rapidly expanding liquefied natural gas exports at an event at the Council on Foreign Relations on Friday.

“I think in this administration, it will become the single largest export of our country, because exports will double during this administration,” he said. “This is a way to get European allies off Russian gas.”

Wright told reporters after the event that Russia has lost much more market share of gas exports from traditional customers in Europe than it’s gaining in China.

“I don’t worry about that for US energy exports,” Wright said, about China’s interest in Russian gas. “But we do worry about it more in that (President Donald Trump’s) top agenda item is, end the killing in Ukraine, and so the pressure to try to reduce Russian revenue from selling energy, that’s the issue.”

Trump, in his second administration, has put an additional 25 per cent tariffs on goods coming into the US from India in response to the country’s buying of Russian oil.

Since coming back to the office, Trump has not imposed direct sanctions on Russian energy entities. REUTERS