Biden was meeting with European Union leaders at a summit in Brussels, where crafting a trans-Atlantic plan to slash Europe’s purchases of Russian energy is a central topic.
The U.S. and the EU on Friday said they would work to ship an additional 15 billion cubic meters of LNG for the 27-nation bloc this year, using supplies from the U.S. and elsewhere. The EU imported a record-high 22 billion cubic meters of LNG last year.
Europe this year is on another record-setting pace as the continent races to sign new contracts with producers in the Middle East and Africa before next winter.
France has ended subsidies for new gas heaters in homes and will instead subsidize electric heat pumps. Italy, the second largest consumer of Russian gas after Germany, is considering burning coal at some power plants rather than natural gas.
Western nations want to end the leverage Russia holds over Europe as the continent’s most important energy supplier and cut a lifeline for the Russian economy.
Natural gas presents the biggest problem for Europe, because the fuel is much more difficult than oil and coal–Russia’s other main energy exports to Europe–to import by boat from other suppliers.
Gas that doesn’t travel through massive pipelines–such as the Nord Stream 2 project that Germany recently suspended in response to the war must be cooled to a liquid, shipped on a tanker and then re-gasified at special facilities.
Europe’s plan will take at least several years to end consumption of Russian gas. Countries that produce LNG are running their export terminals at full capacity, and building new ones takes time. Shifting away from Russian gas the region’s low cost producer puts upward pressure on Europe’s energy bill, at least in the short term before new sources of renewable energy such as wind and solar come online.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has said it wants to slash Russian gas imports by two-thirds this year.
Political | Process 
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