cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/59483772
Washington’s ambition to replace Russia as Eastern Europe’s dominant gas supplier has hit a surprise hurdle: European buyers, it seems, don’t want it.
Two months ago U.S. government officials descended on Athens to declare themselves the big new energy player in the Mediterranean.
New and revamped terminals in Greece would receive shiploads of American liquefied natural gas, which would then be carried up to neighboring countries from Bulgaria to Ukraine by way of the “Vertical Corridor” network of pipes. The aim, they said, was to replace “every last molecule of Russian gas.”
“What we see for the future of Greece and the United States is Greece being an energy hub and showing this energy dominance that both of our countries can experience and work together cooperatively to achieve tremendous outcomes,” U.S. Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle said at the time.
But when the Greek government on Monday asked energy companies to bid for access to these gas pipelines, the auctions were a flop. They attracted almost zero interest from energy companies, prompting warnings from analysts that U.S. President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy is undermining his own energy export ambitions.
The scale of the flop was striking. Out of nearly 72 gigawatt-hours of pipeline capacity offered to companies across three different entry routes, a minuscule 48 megawatt-hours — less than 0.1 percent of the total on offer — were eventually booked. A similar auction in December was even more of a flop, attracting no bids at all.
Imagine that, nobody wants to trade with an erratic dictatorship.
Stable Genius™
It’s more of a risk assessment than anything else. The US has proven to be erratic in honouring treaties and contracts, which makes them unreliable. Gas supply is a critical infrastructure and failures in delivery have grave consequences.
The scale of the flop was striking. Out of nearly 72 gigawatt-hours of pipeline capacity offered to companies across three different entry routes, a minuscule 48 megawatt-hours — less than 0.1 percent of the total on offer — were eventually booked. A similar auction in December was even more of a flop, attracting no bids at all.
TL,DR: Shove your gas up your ass, Pedonald.
Trump treats his trading partners like shit. He hikes tariffs and throws tantrums daily. Now he wants to sell something and no one trusts him enough to sign the deal.
Tired of all that winning yet, America?
Who cares. Donnie got a deal that Europe would buy a bajillion gas, so he won.
That deal was not finalized, and EU just put it back in the fridge after Donald’s little tantrum about Greenland iirc
That’s what I mean. Ursula promised a bunch of impossible things, Donnie got his headlines and his “win” and the EU quietly scrapped the whole thing afterwards.
Even before Greenland, deal was worthless, the EU had no way of forcing the purshase of gas (especially more gas than the US even produces) or the investment in a specific country by the private sector. The whole thing was a farce.
deleted by creator
