Which European Countries Are Most Dependent on US Gas?

Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier cautioned that the EU’s decision to stop the purchase of Russian energy supplies was “absolutely political” and would backfire on the bloc.

Every tenth cubic meter of gas used by the EU in 2023 was supplied by the US, with Lithuania the most dependent on the fuel, Sputnik researchbased on data from the UN platform Comtrade and the International Energy Agency has revealed.

According to the findings, the EU’s gas consumption stood at 330 billion cubic meters last year, 20% less than in 2021.

The US supplied 34.5 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNG), or 10.4% of all gas consumed by the bloc in 2023, with Finland, which didn’t buy US gas in 2021, consuming 38,2% last year.

As for Lithuania, it consumed a record 40% of the American gas last year, against 22.3% in 2021.

The research also revealed that an array of other countries increased US gas supplies in 2023, including Croatia, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Poland, Italy and Germany. With 32%, Croatia proved to be the most dependent on US gas after Lithuania and Finland. The only countries that reduced American gas deliveries last year were Greece, Malta and Portugal.

The research comes after a previous Sputnik review of Eurostat data showed that EU countries had to pay some €185 billion ($201 billion) extra on natural gas over the past 20 months after cutting themselves off from cheap Russian pipeline gas.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin earlier warned that the EU’s “suicidal” and politically motivated decision to halt the purchase of Russian energy supplies as part of Western sanctions would come back to bite the bloc.

“Rejection of Russian energy resources means that Europe will systematically become the region with the highest energy costs in the world…This will seriously – and according to some experts irrevocably – undermine the competitiveness of a significant part of European industry, which is already losing the competition to companies in other regions of the world,” Putin underscored.

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