President Donald Trump pitched U.S. energy exports to Europe as an alternative to supplies from Russia.<\/p>\n
Trump attended a meeting of the Three Seas Initiative, an effort by 12 Central and Eastern European nations to increase trade, infrastructure and energy ties in Warsaw, Poland.<\/p>\n
Trump said \u201cThe United States will never use energy to coerce your nations, and we cannot allow others to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n
The comments Trump made weren\u2019t directly to Russia, but his message was clear to the assembled leaders.<\/p>\n
Russia cut gas supplies to Europe in 2008 during a dispute with Ukraine. Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea in 2014 again raised concerns about Europe’s reliance on Russian gas.<\/p>\n
The Three Seas nations are highly dependent on Russia for natural gas. The initiative’s goal of building out north-south energy infrastructure aligns with the European Union’s effort in recent years to better integrate its gas pipelines to guard against supply shocks, particularly from Russia.<\/p>\n
“We are committed to securing your access to alternate sources of energy, so Poland and its neighbours are never again held hostage to a single supplier of energy,” Trump said.<\/p>\n
The United States administration hopes to ship more liquefied natural gas, or LNG, to the region. The United States has abundant supplies of low-cost natural gas and is building new terminals to ship the fossil fuel overseas in liquid form.<\/p>\n
Poland received from Cheniere Energy\u2019s Sabine Pass terminal its first shipment of U.S. LNG in June this year.<\/p>\n
LNG trade between the United States and Three Seas nations to reduce the U.S. trade deficit and stands to improve energy security among the European countries.<\/p>\n
U.S. LNG significantly displaces Russian natural gas shipped by pipeline are slim. Piped gas sells at a large discount to LNG, which must be cooled to liquid form, shipped overseas and turned back into its gaseous form.<\/p>\n
Russia has the ability to cut prices and adjust contract terms to maintain its dominant position in the European gas market.<\/p>\n
For the time being, those shipments could be limited due to the lack of capacity in the region.<\/p>\n
There are also only two LNG import terminals within the Three Seas bloc: in Poland and Lithuania though Estonia, Croatia, Latvia and Romania also have plans to open LNG terminals. Pipeline connections to Western Europe, which has more LNG terminals, are also limited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Donald Trump pitched U.S. energy exports to Europe as an alternative to supplies from Russia. Trump attended a meeting of the Three Seas Initiative, an [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":258,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.miaexportdemand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.miaexportdemand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.miaexportdemand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.miaexportdemand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.miaexportdemand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.miaexportdemand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72813,"href":"https:\/\/www.miaexportdemand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions\/72813"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.miaexportdemand.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.miaexportdemand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.miaexportdemand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.miaexportdemand.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}