THE United States Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Energy Resources Geoffrey Pyatt has said Russia’s weaponisation of energy has failed.
Pyatt spoke in Washington DC yesterday on the outcome of the tenth EU-US Energy Council’s meeting and the current state and future of global energy issues.
Assistant Secretary Pyatt, who was U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine from 2013 to 2016, said the European Union would enter the winter of ’23-’24 with ample energy storage, while conducting ongoing work to decarbonise.
He said: “I think it’s clear at this stage that Russia’s attempt to weaponise its energy resources against Europe, against Ukraine, and against the world has failed. You see that in the dramatic reduction in European consumption of Russian gas, something I mentioned in my remarks. You see that in the successful implementation of the G7 price cap on crude oil and refined products and the impact that that has had on Russian revenues. And you see that in something that was so clear to me in our conversations in Brussels, which is the decoupling of Europe from Russian energy supplies and the reorientation of the European energy economy towards reliable, trustworthy global partners, including significantly the United States but also critical partners as well in North Africa, in the Caspian region, and elsewhere.
So I think that phase of Russia’s energy war is over. Russia’s weaponization of its resources has also ironically accelerated the investment in Europe in renewables and helped to advance our shared commitment to our climate goals.”
Pyatt added that Ukraine has returned to its status as an energy exporter to Europe.
“We have to recognise, however, that the Ukrainian energy grid today is about 40 percent degraded, so we need to work together to provide Ukraine with the resources it needs to restore that capacity but also to build the greener, more sustainable, more decentralised energy grid that your government, that the Ukrainian Government, has committed to establishing,” he said.
According to Pyatt, the volume of destruction that Russia has inflicted on the energy system is extraordinary. He added that World Bank estimates put it at $10 billion.
“But I have also been deeply impressed that even amid all of this disruption the Ukrainian Government, Ukrainian energy companies, are so clearly committed to building a future energy system which meets the highest European standards of sustainability, is aligned with European regulatory and implementation standards, and provides the power that Ukraine is going to need to sustain its reconstruction process.”
