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Europe may have freed itself from excessive reliance on Russian natural gas, but only by replacing it with another foreign supplier, according to a new analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). The United States is on track to become the EU's largest gas supplier of any kind this year, overtaking regional energy security partner Norway.
The U.S. is overcoming Norway's pipeline-gas advantage by dint of the rapid development of U.S. Gulf Coast LNG plants, as well as the sudden unavailability of Middle Eastern supplies due to the Iran conflict. Qatar, normally the second-largest LNG exporter in the world, now finds itself on the wrong side of the Strait of Hormuz for global shipping. As a result, American liquefaction terminals now account for about two thirds of all European LNG imports - and this could rise to 80 percent by 2028, according to IEEFA.
For the same reason, shipments of Russian-sourced LNG into Europe are also rising and are now at the highest level since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, despite the EU's plans to ban these cargoes by the end of next year. Russian LNG imports rose by 16 percent year-on-year in the first quarter alone.
"LNG has become the Achilles' heel of Europe's energy security strategy, leaving the continent exposed to high gas prices and to new forms of supply disruption," said IEEFA lead Europe analyst Ana Maria Jaller-Makarewicz in a statement. "The 2026 energy crisis shows that as long as European countries choose to rely on gas, they must accept the geopolitical risks that come with it."
Part of the solution is simply cutting demand. Europe's natural gas consumption is on track to shrink by 14 percent by 2030, with more-expensive LNG accounting for a disproportionate share of the declining supply. Even more could be done by speeding up heat-pump adoption in the EU residential market, the think tank says. This has implications for the number of import terminals that the EU needs, and IEEFA thinks that there will likely be excess import infrastructure capacity by 2030.
Fuente: Maritime Executive
