Trump has growing stranglehold over EU and UK energy supply, study shows | Europe

Donald Trump has a stranglehold over EU and UK energy supply as a result of Europe swapping its dependency on Russia for reliance on the US, analysis has shown.

In part due to the war in Ukraine and the imposition of sanctions on Russian pipeline gas, European countries have become dependent on shipments of US liquified natural gas (LNG), according to a paper co-authored by the Clingendael Institute, in The Hague, the Ecologic Institute, in Berlin, and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

The development is fraught with risk at a time when Trump has shifted “towards a more explicitly interest-driven, protectionist and ideologically charged approach”, the paper says.

The US president has most recently threatened to use tariffs on trade with European allies in order get their agreement on his acquisition of Greenland, which is part of Denmark, an EU member state and Nato ally.

Trump’s controversial national security strategy paper published in November explicitly stated that the White House was seeking US energy dominance, which “when and where necessary – enables us to project power”.

Data showed that imports to the European Economic Area of US LNG – natural gas that is supercooled to make it easier to transport – increased by 61% in 2025. The EEA comprises the 27 EU states plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

Imports to the EEA were up 485% compared with 2019 and US LNG now accounted for 59% of LNG imports to the EU, according to gas flows data from December.

In 2024, the UK covered 50% of its gas demand with domestic production and 33% with imports from the EEA. It is otherwise reliant on LNG, of which shipments from the US made up 68% of its total imports.

Pipeline gas imports from Russia accounted for 60% of EEA gas imports in 2019 but by 2025 this share had fallen to 8%.

Prof Kacper Szulecki, of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, said: “We have to acknowledge the new reality of Donald Trump’s American energy dominance and look at Europe’s imports cautiously.

“The US national security strategy of 2025 explicitly frames energy exports as a way to project power. The US has tried a similar approach in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan, attempting to talk European partners out of gas trade with the USSR. But back then there was no technology for liquefying natural gas, so Europe had no alternative but Russian pipeline gas.”

Szulecki said there was a short-term risk of higher energy bills as a result of the recent tensions.

“At the moment, gas reserves in the EU are very low, the lowest in years, and lower than at the outset of the war in Ukraine. If we have a cold winter and tensions with the US, leading to further price increases and reserve depletion, we might see a really dramatic energy crisis in the coming months,” he said.

The worst choice anyone made was imagining he was stupid.

He [has never been that](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/161110114037-trump-false-meme.jpg?q=w_1110,c_fill).

It is odd, what people have decided to decide he was a human like them.

Lmao he has always had ADHD and said his thoughts [that he has](https://youtu.be/1AwAAh60jBo?si=q3ut4jTbeGIAWmPa) while being as human as cancer which is its own debate

Or he is a big mysterious dumb entity that no one can ever parse nah just kidding we all know this is normal and how we talk to people who are real we know

Edit cool. You made someone unhappy. Has to be interesting to think about that as a goal at least right?

China realized it had limited energy resources and so went all-in on solar, wind, nuclear and electrification.

Europe has a strategic energy weakness and should learn from the Chinese strategy. We are already far behind.

We will buy from canada when they are ready, that will be soon

No real alternative to US gas? I thought the Saudis were a major supplier?

At this point I feel like they could try to harness the power of all the GIs revolving in their graves

Use less energy. It’s the most effective way.

Polako prelazimo iz ruske jeftinije ovisnosti u američku skuplju.

We have our own oil and gas reserves, we should have been using those as the stopgap while transitioning to renewables, rather than depending on hostile foreign states.

Ditto for rare earths.

Europe needs to stop being so averse to exploiting its own natural resources.

For now.
The next 5 years are gonna be tough for the EU.
The 5 years after that may be even worse for the US.

Renewables are the way forward, always have been. We have wind, sun, water… we use that. Fossil fuels will always fuel dependency.

In other words:
While Biden managed massive energy sales to Europe, the orange toddlers stiffing of former partners will get those sales down again.
So much winning, maga shitheads.

How about countries produce energy and other important stuff themselves… we used to be pretty good at this before few decades of nonsense decisions were made. 

Time to defeat Putin then

We need to move away from fossil fuels anyway. Just one more reason to do that ASAP.