US remains Europe’s key LNG supplier, says EU Commission

The United States remains an important supplier of LNG gas to the EU, says the European Commission even as Donald Trump ramps up trade war threats to seize Greenland.

“The US liquefied natural gas represented last year around 25 percent of EU’s overall gas imports,” a European Commission spokesperson told reporters in Brussels on Monday (19 January).

“The United States has been, and remains, a key supplier,” she said — adding that the commission does not have access to the commercial contracts signed by companies purchasing LNG.

The move towards US gas is part of an EU strategy to diversify and wean itself off Russian fossil fuel dependence following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The EU in 2022 introduced an anti-Russian fossil fuel strategy, known as REPowerEU.

But the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), a US-based think tank that also operates in Europe, on Monday says that an over-reliance on US gas contradicts this strategy.

It says the EU’s rising reliance on US liquefied natural gas has only created a potentially high-risk geopolitical dependency. The US could supply some 80 percent of its LNG imports to the EU by 2030, it says.