The European Union has accepted a €750 billion deal for fossil fuels with the United States while quietly absorbing a 15 per cent average tariff on its own exports. Energy dependence has not been overcome; it has simply shifted.
While Brussels continues to proclaim its climate objectives and to reiterate the importance and urgency of the green transition, Europe is becoming increasingly dependent on oil and gas that originate largely in the North. Since Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine led the European Union to redefine its energy priorities, the search for alternative suppliers has triggered a restructuring of flows and balances at the global level. The result, however, is not greater autonomy but a dependence that, quite simply, “shifts” from the Russian Arctic to the North American Arctic.
The LNG arriving at terminals in Rotterdam, Wilhelmshaven or Piombino no longer comes from the Yamal Peninsula. It originates from export hubs built in Alaska, British Columbia or along the Gulf Coast, many of which are fed by Arctic resources. And if in the past it was Moscow that determined timing and volumes, it is now Washington that imposes the terms.
With Donald Trump back in the White House, the United States has reinforced its strategy of energy penetration in Europe. Exports of oil and gas, particularly from the northern part of the American continent, have become as much a political tool as a commercial one. In attempting to break free from its dependence on Moscow, the European Union now risks binding itself in the same way to Washington.
From Russia to America
Until 2022, most of the Arctic gas destined for Europe came from Russia, and in particular from the Yamal Peninsula, where Novatek had developed a system of production, liquefaction and transport along the Northern Sea Route. LNG carriers navigated the ice, escorted by nuclear-powered icebreakers, and discharged in European ports via the Barents Sea. After the start of the conflict in Ukraine, however, this system collapsed. Europe ended its long-term contracts with Gazprom and others, imposed limits on Russian LNG imports and suspended all forms of cooperation with Moscow. The need for energy supplies, however, remained unchanged. Therefore, attention shifted to other suppliers, particularly Canada and the United States.
In Alaska, federal authorities have revived projects such as Alaska LNG, a colossal infrastructure intended to link Arctic gas fields to the southern coast via a pipeline of nearly 1,300 kilometres. In British Columbia, the expansion of export terminals also depends on resources extracted in Arctic and subarctic zones. The routes have thus been redrawn from East to West, from Siberia to Alaska.
As is obvious, energy is not—and has never been—just a commodity. It is a tool of political pressure. Oil and gas produced in North America are now central to a broader plan aimed at securing a lasting presence in European markets by taking advantage of the breakdown in relations with Russia.
The infrastructure developed in Alaska and Canada is not just about boosting export capacity. Once in place, it locks European countries into a supply network that is difficult to replace and shapes political and energy decisions around the need to keep the flow steady. It’s the same mechanism previously used by Russia, only this time, apparently, it’s okay.
Sustainability In Words, Submission In Practice
In the face of the latest demands from the Trump administration, the European Union has raised no resistance. On the contrary, it accepted the terms offered, committed to greater imports of American LNG, and rushed to create around it a reassuring narrative of transition and strategic autonomy. But the numbers tell a different story.
According to official sources, the EU has committed to purchasing up to €750 billion worth of American energy over the coming years (specifically €250 billion annually for three years) particularly oil, gas and nuclear fuel. It is an enormous figure, in clear contradiction with the EU’s stated climate objectives and one that could question the viability of the Green Deal itself.
The targets imposed by Trump are largely unachievable. The United States lacks the logistical capacity to deliver such volumes, and Europe is unlikely to absorb them within the timelines and scale planned. Anyway, Brussels embraced the proposal, allowing a hardly credible promise to take the shape of an actual policy.
All of this is happening while the United States is introducing an average 15 per cent tariff on a broad range of European goods, effective from the 1st of August. A so-called “reciprocal tariff” only in name: the EU, which had previously applied an average tariff of just 0.9 per cent, has chosen not to respond for now, leaving countermeasures on €93 billion of U.S. goods suspended. The imbalance is clear. Even in the face of obvious commercial penalties, the EU continues to grant the U.S. preferential access to its energy market.
The European Union continues to present itself as a committed actor in the green transition, autonomous and consistent with its own values. But the energy deal with the United States and the lack of any response to the tariffs suggest otherwise. The dependence on Russian Arctic gas has simply been replaced by an equally binding reliance on North American sources. The supplier changes, but the logic is the same.
The result is a policy deprived of ambition, happy to follow objectives set elsewhere. The transition remains little more than a slogan, and sovereignty, in energy matters, an empty word.
AUTHORTommaso Bontempi
Journalist
Osservatorio Artico