US plans to halve Russia’s energy revenues by 2030 – State Department

The United States government plans to cut Russia's oil and gas export revenues in half by the end of this decade. 

Geoffrey Pyatt, the US Deputy Secretary of State for Energy Resources, announced this in an interview with the Financial Times, Rubryka reports.

"We're going to do everything we can to help make that true," Pyatt said. "The goal of these sanctions is to change Russia's behavior and to ensure that Putin is not in a position, whenever some kind of peace is achieved . . . to use three or four years to rearm and prepare himself and prepare his military for stage three of the Ukraine invasion." 

The FT reports that Russia has continued to export large volumes of oil since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. However, the International Energy Agency forecasts that oil and gas exports from Russia could fall by at least 40-50% by 2030 if Western sanctions against the Russian energy sector persist.

Last year, the G7 countries introduced a ceiling price for exporting Russian oil to preserve the flow of crude oil but reduce Kremlin revenues.

According to the rules, non-G7 countries can continue to buy Russian crude oil but must pay less than $60 per barrel if they want to use Western ships or insurers.

Importing Russian oil into the EU, the United States, and other G7 countries is mostly prohibited. Although initially, these measures led to a sharp drop in prices for Russian oil, the Kremlin later established a new network of traders and vessels to bypass these restrictions, allowing them to sell oil to buyers, mainly in India and China, at prices higher than the set ceiling price.

A significant portion of this oil is transported through the "shadow fleet" of vessels, the ownership of which is challenging to restrict with sanctions. Some oil still moves through Western ships working with Western insurance.

Payett assured that the US is currently looking "for ways to make that shadow fleet less effective."