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Ron Bousso
(Reuters) – It may appear quite audacious for the world’s largest natural gas producer to demand that its biggest market stop buying from a competitor. But that’s exactly what unfolded this week at the global gas industry’s annual gathering in Milan.
Speaking at the start of the Gastech conference, U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum delivered a clear message: Europe should stop purchasing gas from Russia, which the United States would happily replace.
American energy dominance, a key pillar of President Donald Trump’s agenda for his second term, aims to bring both peace and prosperity to the world, Burgum told the audience of European energy officials and company executives.
“We achieve prosperity at home and with our allies through energy abundance… Peace is achieved around the world by selling our energy to our friends and allies who don’t have to buy from our adversaries,” said Burgum, a former governor of the oil and gas-rich state of North Dakota
The comments come as Washington is ratcheting up pressure on Europe to cut off its remaining purchases of Russian oil and gas to squeeze the Kremlin’s war economy and put pressure on President Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine.
‘ENERGY DOMINANCE’
Europe sharply reduced its Russian pipeline gas imports following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and it aims to fully phase out purchases of Russian gas by 2027, if not earlier.
Yet the region has continued to import some Russian gas through the Turkstream pipeline into Bulgaria.
And, importantly, Europe has arguably just traded one dependency for another. The region’s Russian pipeline volumes have mostly been replaced by LNG imports – and the majority of those have come from the United States.
In the first half of 2025, Europe’s LNG imports rose by 25% from the previous year, reaching an all-time high of 92 billion cubic metres (bcm). The United States accounted for over 55% of those imports, followed by Russia at 14%.
Given this new reality, Europe has little choice but to go along with the Trump administration’s energy agenda.
The European Commission Director General for Energy Ditte Juul Jorgensen told the conference that the bloc will continue to strengthen its energy partnership with the United States.
“The U.S. policy of energy dominance is complementary to our strategy of replacing Russian energy in our system,” she said.
These words have already been translated into action.
On Monday, Italy and the United States vowed to deepen energy ties, including through increased LNG purchases. And then on Wednesday, Italy’s energy company Edison signed a deal with Shell to buy around 0.7 million tonnes per year of U.S. LNG starting in 2028, which could continue for up to 15 years.
Of course, some among EU members – most notably Hungary and Slovakia – are pushing back against this U.S. pivot. These two countries still rely heavily on Russian oil and gas and thus both opposed the import ban earlier this year.
Sitting alongside Burgum at the conference, Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said the central European country “cannot walk away from Russian gas” because of geographical and infrastructure constraints.
Still, actions speak louder than words. The Hungarian natural gas wholesaler MVM CEEnergy signed a 10-year deal with Shell on Tuesday that will see the latter supply 200 million cubic metres (mcm) of natural gas a year, beginning in January 2026. The aim here is clearly to reduce the country’s reliance on Russia.
Overall then, Europe appears to be doing precisely what Burgum is asking for.
EXTREME DEPENDENCE
As a result, Europe’s energy dependence is likely to soon be the most extreme ever.
Replacing Russia’s LNG volumes with U.S. volumes would increase America’s share of EU LNG imports to around 70%. If the additional 16 bcm of gas imports via the Turkstream pipeline are also replaced, that could boost the portion to over 80%. That would equate to around 23% of total gas imports, when including pipeline imports from Norway, Azerbaijan and North Africa, according to Reuters calculations.
For comparison, Russia accounted for around 40% of Europe’s total gas imports before 2022.
While reliance on U.S. energy carries less political risk, such extreme dependence nevertheless exposes Europe to potentially severe disruptions such as a sudden drop in exports from the U.S. Gulf Coast due to hurricanes or heatwaves. And the chaotic policymaking out of Washington since January shows that political risk can exist among allies.
Burgum said that the U.S. energy dominance policy is fully aligned with Europe’s ambition to end its dependence on Russia. For now, that seems to be correct.
But who knows how long these allies’ energy and security goals will remain in synch. The EU better hope it is a long time, as the bloc’s outsized energy dependence will leave it with little room to manoeuvre.
Ron Bousso Editing by Marguerita Choy
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