The liquid will find a hole

Some Americans were incredibly surprised to learn the other day that the United States imported Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG). How so? America is the world's largest LNG manufacturer. In July last year, President Trump, while in Warsaw, promised the Eastern European countries to provide them with gas instead of the Russian one. But everything happened exactly the opposite: Russia is now selling its US gas.

At the end of January, the specialized French ship Gaselys arrived in Boston, which delivered a party to the LNG mined to Yamal to New England. The second ship with the same load, Provalys, is expected in Boston on February 15.

Both the Speaker of Novatek and its largest shareholder Leonid Michelson are on the sanctions lists. What are these sanctions that do not interfere with business at all?

As early as July 2014, when the Barack Obama administration imposed sanctions against Novatek, the company made a statement from which it follows that American sanctions will not affect its business interests: “This measure does not interfere with the production and commercial activities of Novate in any jurisdiction, does not concern the assets and shares of the company. Among the shareholders of Novatek there are American citizens and the largest citizens and the largest citizens Investment funds and US banks. " The Russian Forbes wrote then that sanctions against Novatek have no economic sense.

Novatek, however, lost access to American financial markets, however, the company's investment deficit was compensated by the Russian government at the expense of the Russian National Welfare Fund. These funds were sent to the Yamal-SSG project, which provides for the construction of a liquefied gas production plant. Other largest investors were China and French Total. Novatek said that in the next ten years he will become the world's largest producer of LNG. In December, the plant on Yamal entered into operation.

Novatek’s deal with American importers was facilitated by exclusively cold winter, which exhausted the New English gas reserves. New England in the usual winter satisfies 10 percent of its needs due to import, and 20 percent in such a cold as the current one. Direction of domestic gas is limited by the low throughput of pipelines and the lack of specialized vessels that could deliver LNG from where it is produced, for example, from the Gulf of Mexico. It turns out that America does not have a single LNG -Tanker (LNG is a gas chilled to -162 degrees Celsius, so it cannot be transported on a regular ship without special equipment.) But why not capture a foreign ship? Because in 1920, the Congress adopted, and President Wilson signed the so -called Johns law, who, in order to promote the development of his own coastal shipping, banned the use of foreign vessels to deliver goods from one American port to another.

By all these circumstances, Novatek took advantage of. In addition, LNG sold to America is not the property of the company. It was sold to the Malaysian state company Petronas, and she sold the entire batch of French English. The gas was delivered from Yamal by the Novatek Russian icebreaker Christoph de Margeri on the British Island of Grain and there was overloaded with a French ship bought specifically on the occasion of American cold weather.

That's all the mechanics. Naturally, LNG, delivered for distant lands and twice resold, is much more expensive than domestic, but the end consumer paid for the difference, forced to heat his house in a fierce cold.