Rex Tillerson’s appointment as Donald Trump’s secretary of state has paved the way for a new round of US-Russia energy talks that could open up investment in oil and gas, according to a former Russian energy minister.

Igor Yusufov, who served during Vladimir Putin’s first term and is a former Gazprom board director, said the former ExxonMobil chief executive’s “business-like manner” and America’s changing political climate had created hopes for a revival of bilateral energy summits that last took place more than a decade ago.

ExxonMobil has huge oil assets in the Russian Arctic but is barred from exploring them by sanctions, and would be the main beneficiary of any thawing in relations.

Tillerson told a confirmation hearing on Wednesday that sanctions harmed US businesses, but said he had personally never lobbied against sanctions despite reports saying ExxonMobil did so under his leadership.

Tillerson was involved in US-Russia energy summits in 2002 and 2003, where he met Yusufov, who now runs a $2bn (£1.6bn) Russian oil and gas fund, Fund Energy.

There is mention of the possibility of future US-Russia energy talks in a dossier published by BuzzFeed on Wednesday on Trump’s alleged close ties with Russia.

In a claim the Guardian is unable to verify, the dossier says a Putin associate, Igor Sechin, met Trump adviser Carter Page in Moscow and raised with him the prospect of “future bilateral energy cooperation”.

Page – an oil industry consultant – is claimed to have reacted positively but to have been noncommittal in response.



Page, however, has said that while he did he did visit Moscow, he did not meet Sechin.

Yusufov told the Guardian Trump’s success had “evoked hopes” that energy dialogues between the US and Russia could be revived.



“Russia possesses both political and economical will to resuscitate this important international interaction format, possibly convoking the third energy summit with participation of leading ministries and private companies,” he said.

The 2002 and 2003 energy summits sprang out of meetings between George W Bush and Putin, and were seen by the US as a chance to identify new opportunities for investment in Russia.



Yusufov said a third summit could generate investments and help drive up the price of oil, which has rallied after an Opec deal last year to curb production that included Russia.

“[It would bring] stability to the global oil market, which means a just price for crude oil,” he said.

“In their turn, these relations of global partnership can lead to a reasonable exchange of both investments and technologies.”

Anything that pushes up the oil price is in Russia’s strategic interests, as the low price over the last two years has severely strained the country’s budget and seen living standards for ordinary Russians decline.

ExxonMobil has said that when and if sanctions are lifted, the company would return to its joint venture with Rosneft in Arctic waters, where it holds oil licences spanning 600,000 sq km (230,000 sq miles).

In 2014, Exxon suspended cooperation with Rosneft after Russian intervention in Ukraine.

Observers said that even if Yusufov was not speaking on behalf of the Russian government, he was advocating an agenda that served the Kremlin’s interest.

“It might just be one of his personal initiatives that are not really backed, but the other side of story is he has certain connections to people in power,” said Vladimir Milov, a Russian opposition politician at the Institute of Energy Policy, a Moscow-based thinktank.

Milov, who was deputy minister to Yusufov in 2002, said: “Here, a lot of people are hoping for some reopening of relations with US and potential involvement of Americans in certain projects – the energy industry in the first place.

“They want to unfreeze the projects with Exxon and I assume there’s mutual interest from big corporations in the US.”

This week US thinktank the Center for American Progress said it expected the Trump administration to change US policies to aid ExxonMobil’s interests in Russia.

“As secretary of state, Tillerson could presumably align state department policy in the Middle East, China, Russia and elsewhere with the financial interests of Exxon,” it said in a report.

“At no time in recent US history has one company been at the brink of attaining so much power and influence over US policy, both domestic and foreign.”

A Kremlin spokesman on Wednesday said Russia stood by its assessment of Tillerson as someone who was constructive but tough.

“We understand that Tillerson will continue to be quite tough in pursuing his line,” said Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary.