According to a report in Belgian daily Le Soir, taken up by other media outlets, such as The Guardian and Eurasia Review, Wilbur Ross holds a 35-percent interest in Navigator Holdings, a shipping company registered in the Marshall Islands.
According to the leaked documents, four cargo carriers owned by Navigator Holdings were used to load Russian natural gas at the port of Ust Luga before heading to the Anwerp LNG terminal in Belgium.
The documents suggest that a company with U.S. ownership is buying Russian gas from petrochemical giant Sibur, and then selling it—at a profit, of course— to the European Union, which is in a rush to build as many LNG terminals as it can in a bid to reduce its dependence on Russian gas.
If the reports are true, the situation is an ironic one for Europe: while trying to reduce its dependence on Russian gas it is inadvertently increasing it and is even paying more for it than it would if it bought the extra loads directly from Gazprom.
One might wonder how a U.S. company is able to do business with a Russian one. It’s simple: Wilbur Ross himself said earlier this week that Sibur is not a subject to sanctions, so for Navigator Holdings and the petrochemical giant, everything is business as usual.