SKOLKOVO /near Moscow/, January 27. /TASS/. US sanctions will not inflict damage on the Russian industry but will create additional opportunities for its growth, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told reporters on Saturday.
"Our companies continue working, the indicators are improving. Upon the results of 2017, we have achieved very good performance ratings so the sanctions will give us additional opportunities for the growth of domestic industry," Novak said.
According to the minister, the sanctions are regrettable.
"These measures and steps are atavistic. They cannot lay a basis for the market growth, for competiveness. They run counter to WTO rules and help create conditions for promotion of goods and services for companies of those nations that have imposed sanctions," Novak said. "Although, as practice proves, those companies actually get losses and, on the contrary, suffer themselves. It means that the sanctions fail to achieve the set goals and are more likely a political step."
Novak is convinced that the sanctions have no overall influence on the Russian energy sector.
"Sanctions have an impact on the extraction of tight oil, offshore production and other aspects. So they duplicate the previous sanctions," Novak said. "Our companies have to assess this, but they have been working under these circumstances since 2014, so we can see that sanctions have no impact on our companies but create additional problems for relations between our countries and companies."
U.S. new sanctions
On Friday, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced a wider list of Russian individuals and companies subject to sanctions imposed on Moscow over the Ukraine crisis.
The extended list includes individuals and companies, allegedly involved in supplies of the Siemens turbines to Crimea - Alexei Mordashov’s company Power Machines, which has been cooperating with Siemens in production of turbines, as well as the Technopromexport engineering company (part of the Rostec State Corporation), which is building two power plants in Crimea.
Technopromexport’s Director General Sergei Topor-Gilka, Deputy Energy Minister Andrei Cherezov and Head of the Department of Operational Control and Management in Electric Power Industry at the Russian Energy Ministry Yevgeny Grabchak are among the blacklisted individuals.