Government investigating energy sanctions on Russia

Liz Truss has said the government is investigating energy sanctions on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

During a House of Commons debate on Monday (28 February) on the sanctions that were announced over the weekend, the foreign secretary was pressed by her Labour counterpart David Lammy to take additional action to punish Russia economically.

While welcoming moves to take action against Russia’s financial sector, which includes measures to cut out many of the country’s banks from the SWIFT international payments system, the shadow foreign secretary urged her to do more.

He said: “The government should go further to ensure sanctions can also be placed against Russia’s extractive industries, energy industries and technological industries.”

Responding for the government, Truss said the government is “looking at” more sanctions on the energy and technology industries in order to cut the “free world’s dependence” on Russian gas and deprive the country’s president Vladimir Putin of his “key source” of revenue.

Targeting the oil and gas industry is “ultimately the most important thing because it is funding Putin’s war machine”, she said.

“We will not rest until we have completely cut the Russian economy off and cut it off from its supply of oil and gas money to ensure that Putin does not have the money to fund his war machine.”

Truss also said the UK is encouraging its allies to back a “total ban” on SWIFT transactions.

According to press reports since this weekend’s unveiling of the latest sanctions package, the clampdown on SWIFT is due to sidestep energy transactions in order to enable the continued flow of the Russian gas and oil that many European countries rely on.

Truss acknowledged that while the UK gets only three per cent of its energy from Russian oil and gas, that figure is as high as “90% or 100%” for other countries.

But she said that export controls already applied to critical technologies will make investment in the Russian oil and gas industry “much harder”.

Pressed by the Conservative backbencher John Redwood to reduce Europe’s “cruel dependency” on Russian energy by encouraging more domestic production of oil and gas, Truss said the government is “certainly… committed” to exploiting the UK’s reserves of these fossil fuels and must increase its investment in nuclear power.