What changes in the fuels market

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, proposed to the then US presidential candidate Donald Trump in early November to replace the Russian gas with US LNG. In early December, the counter-proposal by the now elected President of the United States of America was to increase imports of natural gas from the EU to replace Russian natural gas with American LNG in order to prevent the EU from suffering high tariffs on its exports of products to the US. A week later the Panama Canal case and the “acquisition” of Greenland were back in the news.

On this commercial poker table, it is interesting to place the official data of the US Department of Energy which highlights that the total export capacity of natural gas (pipelines and LNG) of the US in 2023 amounted to about 215 billion cubic meters (bcm). Of this, 92 bcm involved exports via pipelines to Canada and Mexico and 123 bcm worldwide by ship (about 55 bcm in Europe). The new sanctions of 2025 in combination with the weather conditions, caused the diversion of US  LNG cargoes from their original destination to Asia,  to Europe, as  the European gas prices were higher in relation to those of Asia. At the same time, the Brent 's spot rose to and $5 a barrel due to expansion of the sanctions of USA to Russia. This situation leads to a reduction in exports of Russian oil of 2-2.5 million barrels per day, that should lead to a rise in world oil prices. This quantity is almost three times more than the global surplus supply that the International Energy Agency predicted for in 2025. With other words the additional needs for oil will be inevitably equivalent to 5 million barrels per day to be covered by the other producers.

From Policy Journal, January-February 2025, V. 7, p.117-125 (in Greek)