China Claims U.S. Plotting ‘Dirty Energy Gold Rush’ in Ukraine

China’s state-run Global Times on Tuesday accused the United States of plotting a “dirty energy gold rush” in Ukraine, extending the old “blood for oil” smear from the Iraq War to claim America only supports Ukraine because it secretly covets the nation’s “oil, gas, and nuclear infrastructure.”

The Global Times amusingly quoted its own “Chinese expert” mouthpieces, as though their opinions are proof of its dire insinuations, then raved about the surge in U.S. liquid natural gas (LNG) exports after the Russian invasion of Ukraine as if there was some complex conspiracy underlying the increased demand for other LNG sources after China’s partners in Moscow took their own products off the market.

This was followed by dozens of paragraphs of vague muttering about American companies signing agreements with Ukraine to help it build more nuclear reactors. On any other day, Chinese media would be bragging about all the nuclear reactors Beijing plans to build even as China litters the Third World with coal-burning power plants and digs up mountains of dirty coal to fuel them.

Far, far down in the Global Times screed, the Chinese propagandists finally got around to their marquee accusation that the U.S. — which they just spent thousands of words accusing of profiteering by exporting too much LNG and signing contracts to build nuclear power plants — has been secretly scheming to grab Ukraine’s oil all along.

The charge turned out to be based entirely on the fulminations of one “Chinese expert” mouthpiece who was convinced America must be plotting to steal Ukraine’s oil, or maybe the U.S. wants to not drill for Ukrainian oil and gas so it can keep prices high for its own exports. The Chinese experts were not clear on the details of the evil American scheme but were confident that it must be bad. China’s utterly rapacious hunger for cheap oil, gas, and minerals went wholly unmentioned, of course.

The “dirty energy gold rush” line turned out to be borrowed from a furious op-ed in Newsweek that was mostly angry at the U.S. for helping Ukraine build its own energy infrastructure:

“Under the guise of ‘liberating’ Ukraine from a reliance on Russia’s dirty energy imports, there has been an explosion of investment in oil and gas infrastructure which, once it’s built, will be around for a long time,” Michael Shank, an adjunct professor at the New York University’s Center for Global Affairs, said in an opinion piece published on Newsweek on May 14.

“Concerns loom large regarding new nuclear power plants being targeted for nuclear terrorism,” Shank said. “All these American approaches to ‘saving Ukraine’ and ‘liberating’ them from Russian reliance reinforce a centralized energy system. And that’s exactly what Ukraine doesn’t need. Ukraine needs to decentralize its energy system, not centralize it.”

Big nuclear plants and big coal, gas, and oil facilities just give enemies bigger targets to bomb, sabotage, or hack, Shank argued.

That would all be less of a problem if Beijing could persuade its “unlimited partners” in Moscow to stop bombing, sabotaging, and hacking everything in Ukraine, but so far, Beijing has absolutely refused to condemn the invasion or pressure Russia to back off.

The only evidence of America’s interest in Ukrainian oil the Global Times could produce was an April meeting between Ukraine’s state gas company, Naftogaz, and “big U.S. oil groups including ExxonMobil, Halliburton, and Chevron about Ukraine energy projects in a bid to increase output in the country.”

The talks in question were not about U.S. companies plotting to steal Ukraine’s oil, but rather Ukraine seeking increased foreign investment, which Naftogaz understood was a tough sell while China’s partners in Russia are bombing Ukrainian cities. Of the U.S. corporations the Global Times mentioned, only Halliburton was close to signing a deal in the near future.

“We understand that it’s rather hard for the private companies to step in during the war,” Naftogaz chief executive Oleksiy Chernyshov said during the meetings in April.

“The talks are a part of Ukraine’s push to increase natural gas production. Ukraine has substantial reserves of natural gas, but consumption far outstrips production and the country is forced to import gas,” Reuters observed at the time.