U.S. and EU seal the deal for LNG supply as Europe seeks to cut Russian energy ties

Brussels, March 25 - Neftegaz.RU. U.S. President Joe Biden arrived in Europe this week to attend the NATO summit and meet with European allies in light of Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, which started a month ago, Offshore Energy has reported.

The U.S. and its European allies have been working to reduce their dependence on Russian fossil fuels, with the U.S. completely banning the imports of Russian oil, LNG and coal as well as all investments in Russia.
Last year, the U.S. imported nearly 700,000 barrels per day of crude oil and refined petroleum products from Russia.

On the other hand, the EU member states developed an outline of a plan, which is supposed to make them independent from Russian fossil fuels well before 2030, starting with gas.
This could reduce Europe’s demand for Russian gas by 2/3 before the end of the year.

Through the REPowerEU plan, the EU confirmed its objective to reach independence from Russian fossil fuels well before the end of the decade, replacing them with stable, affordable, reliable and clean energy supplies.

As part of his visit, Biden met this week with the EC President, Ursula von der Leyen.
In a push to reduce Europe’s dependency on Russian gas as quickly as possible and reduce Europe’s dependence on gas overall, Biden and von der Leyen reaffirmed a joint commitment to Europe’s energy security and sustainability and to accelerating the global transition to clean energy.

They established immediate cooperation to address the emergency energy security objective of ensuring appropriate levels of gas storage ahead of next winter and the following one.

Therefore, they will immediately establish a joint Task Force on Energy Security to set out the parameters of this cooperation and execute its implementation.

Energy security task force
These include the U.S. ensuring additional LNG volumes for the EU market of at least 15 bcm in 2022 with expected increases going forward.

The U.S. and EC will undertake efforts to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of all new LNG infrastructure and associated pipelines, including through the use of clean energy to power onsite operations, the reduction of methane leakage and the construction of clean and renewable hydrogen ready infrastructure.

The EC will also work with the EU Member States and market operators to pool demand through a newly established EU Energy platform for additional volumes between April and October 2022 and, together with the U.S., encourage relevant contracting to support final investment decisions on both LNG export and import infrastructure.

The EC will work toward ensuring stable demand for additional U.S. LNG until at least 2030 of approximately 50 bcm/annum.

The EC has proposed a regulation on energy storage to ensure that the existing storage infrastructure is filled up to 90 % of its capacity by 1 November each year, with specific phase-in provisions for 2022.


Author: Nermina Kulovic