The United States will endeavor – in cooperation with “international partners” – to supply Europe with an additional 15 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in 2022, as part of this initiative unveiled by US President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, according to a communicated.
The EU is being pressed by kyiv and some member states, including the Baltic countries and Poland, to adopt drastic sanctions to stop imports of Russian hydrocarbons, in order to deprive Vladimir Putin’s regime of its main economic resource. Washington has already imposed an embargo on gas and oil on March 8.
But many European states remain opposed to it, because of the strong dependence of the continent: some 45% of European gas purchases come from Russia – this is the case for 55% of German imports, as well as the bulk of supplies from Finland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
Moscow supplies 150 billion cubic meters of gas per year
Moscow supplies around 150 billion cubic meters of gas each year to the EU, including around 15 billion cubic meters of LNG.
The United States only accounted for 6.3% of total European gas imports in the first half of 2021 – but it is already the largest supplier of liquefied natural gas to the EU.
“We were able to take this decision (of an embargo), while others could not, because we are a net exporter of energy, with a strong sector (in hydrocarbons)”Joe Biden told the press on Friday.
Washington “welcomes the ambitious commitment of the EU to reduce its dependence on Russian gas, and we have agreed on a common action plan to contribute to this objective, while accelerating our progress” towards a decarbonisation of the economy, he added.
Decrease dependence on Russian gas
The European Commission is seeking to reduce European imports of Russian gas by two-thirds this year, and to get rid of them completely “well before 2030”thanks to reserve filling obligations, energy savings, group purchases of gas and diversification of suppliers.
In addition to its negotiations with the main producing countries (Norway, United States, Qatar, Algeria), the EU had already declared at the end of January that it was working on the supply of “additional volumes of natural gas” American for Europe.
As part of the task force announced on Friday, the EU executive will work with member states “with the aim of guaranteeing, at least until 2030, a demand for approximately 50 billion m3 per year of additional American LNG”.
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