Europe’s Necessary Energy Dependence Switch
Now is the time for the United States to break the Middle East and Russian dominance of global energy supply. Providing our energy resources to Europe would break the old global energy system and bring Europe geopolitically closer to the United States. The National Review’s “Marshall Plan for Energy”, explains that the U.S. has the resources and the timing is right assist in economic and political stability in Europe through energy resources.
Over one-third of Europe’s oil and natural gas comes from Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union.
- Imports from Russia have grown 10 percent in the past decade, while imports from elsewhere of LNG (the liquefied form of natural gas) have fallen 50 percent.
- Shipping 2 million barrels of American oil to Europe per day would cut the E.U.’s dependence on Russian petroleum in half.
- Sending just over 2 trillion cubic feet of America’s natural gas to Europe annually would halve the E.U.’s reliance on Russia’s gas pipelines, many of which cross Ukraine.
- U.S. oil production is the fastest growing in the world and has risen by 3 million barrels per day in just four years.
- U.S. natural-gas production has jumped by 4 trillion cubic feet per year over the past four years, also entirely on private and state lands.
Plus it would also pretty much stop Russia from playing that old trick where they shut off Europe’s access to LNG randomly as a political tool. It costs them, it costs Europe, and it would be avoided if the US was to trade more LNG or start trading crude oil.