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India will not buy liquefied natural gas from the sanctioned Russian project Arctic LNG 2, India’s Oil Secretary Pankaj Jain said on Friday.
“We will not buy (supply from) Arctic LNG 2. We are not buying any sanctioned commodity. Something which has broad-based sanctions, we are not touching it,” the official told reporters today, as carried by Reuters.
The U.S. and the EU have imposed sanctions on the Arctic LNG 2 project, aiming to stifle Russia’s revenues from oil and gas.
Located in the Gydan Peninsula in the Arctic, the Arctic LNG 2 project, operated by Russian gas developer Novatek, was considered key to Russia’s efforts to boost its global LNG market share from 8% to 20% by 2030-2035.
But Arctic LNG 2 has been basically on ice since the U.S. imposed in November 2023 sanctions on the Russian project. As a result, foreign shareholders suspended participation in Arctic LNG 2, effectively withdrawing from the financing of the project and for offtake contracts for the new plant.
Last month, the U.S. State Department intensified efforts to derail Arctic LNG 2 exports by targeting companies involved in the development of the project and vessels found to have loaded LNG from the facility.
The project has already seen months of delays after the U.S. sanctions upended the company’s plans for production start-up and export timelines.
Russia, however, has started to amass a dark fleet of tankers to ship its LNG in vessel ownership transfers similar to the moves that Moscow began after the invasion of Ukraine to create a shadow fleet to export oil and products in the face of Western sanctions.
While India is steering clear of sanctioned Russian LNG, it continues to seek cheap oil and gas supply, including from Russia.
India will not change its energy policy to buy oil and gas at the lowest possible price and will continue to purchase cheaper Russian crude supply, Indian Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri told Reuters last week.
“If an entity is not under sanctions, there is no question I will buy from the cheapest supplier,” the minister said.
