MOSCOW, April 20 (Reuters) - The Kremlin, when asked on Monday about a U.S. sanctions waiver on some Russia's oil exports, said that Russia was a responsible and important player on global energy markets and that it was hard not to take Russia's export volumes into account.
The Donald Trump administration on Friday renewed a waiver allowing countries to buy sanctioned Russian oil at sea for about a month, even as lawmakers accused the government of going easy on Moscow as its war on Ukraine grinds
on.
Russia is the world's third-largest oil producer and the second-biggest crude exporter.
"Russia remains a responsible and very important player in the global energy markets. The markets are going through difficult times at the moment," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a daily conference call with reporters.
"And, of course, it is very hard not to take Russian volumes into account or ignore them," he said.
The move is part of the administration's effort to control global energy prices that have shot higher during the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. It came after countries in Asia, suffering from the global energy shock, pressed Washington to allow alternative supplies to reach markets.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's special envoy Kirill Dmitriev said an extension of the U.S. waiver will affect another 100 million barrels of Russian oil, bringing the total volume affected by both waivers to 200 million barrels.
(Reporting by Anastasia Lyrchikova, Writing by Felix Light; editing by Vladimir Soldatkin/Guy Faulconbridge)
