700 billion euros “bill” of Europeans for American energy resources
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The agreement on tariffs and trade, agreed on 27 July by the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the US President, Donald J. Trump, includes the intention to purchase more liquefied natural gas (LNG), oil and nuclear fuels from the US, as well as cutting-edge technologies and investments by the end of 2028, worth around $750 billion (around €700 billion), a statement from the EU Executive said.
The political agreement between the EU and the US will further enhance cooperation in ensuring the security of energy supply, contribute to the implementation of the REPowerEU plan and the roadmap to fully replace all energy imports from Russia, the European Commission believes.
The US is already one of the bloc’s main energy partners and by far the EU’s largest LNG supplier, with 55% of LNG supplies coming from the US so far in 2025. The US is also the EU’s largest oil supplier (17% of total EU imports in 2024) and a key supplier of nuclear fuel and fuel services, with US exports to the EU estimated at around €700 million in 2024.
The EU’s total LNG import capacity currently stands at around 250 billion cubic metres per year, more than double current annual LNG imports. In particular, 12 new LNG terminals and 6 expansion projects are due to come online across the EU between 2022 and 2024, adding 70 billion cubic metres of import capacity. In context, the EU has imported around 50 billion cubic metres of LNG from the US annually in recent years.
Currently, 12 EU Member States have the necessary infrastructure to import LNG. The EU has ample spare capacity to cope with additional LNG imports, including from the US, to replace gas imports from Russia.
Since the adoption of the Affordable Energy Action Plan in February 2025, the Commission has been working intensively with US LNG suppliers. Through this preparatory work, the Commission is ready to organise a specific process – AggregateEU – to collect demand from EU entities and match it with competitive US LNG supplies for the period 2025-2050.
AggregateEU is the Commission’s flagship initiative on demand aggregation and coordinated gas procurement at European level, as part of the EU Energy Platform launched in April 2023, to make the EU’s energy supply more diverse, secure and coordinated.
While the Commission facilitates contacts between relevant EU buyers and sellers, commercial decisions naturally belong to companies. At the same time, the US will need to support these procurements by ensuring unrestricted access and sufficient production and export capacity.
The figure of $250 billion per year for the next three years represents the estimated average of the EU’s total energy imports from the US, based on a thorough and robust assessment that took into account: the current volumes of US imports of LNG, oil, nuclear fuel and fuel services into the EU, which already amount to around $90-100 billion per year. In parallel, the EC continues to diversify energy sources and invest in the long-term clean energy transition, the statement added.
In addition, the estimated additional volumes of oil, gas and nuclear fuels are targeted, including as part of Russia’s fossil fuel phase-out. In 2024, the EU still imported around €22 billion worth of fossil fuels from Russia and supplied around €700 million worth of nuclear energy.
It also takes into account the main US investments, services and exports in the field of energy technologies in the EU, in particular in the nuclear sector for conventional and small modular reactors (SMRs), where we already have clear indications of the involvement of US companies.
While solid forecasts have been developed, the final volumes and the breakdown between oil, LNG and nuclear fuel and fuel services will depend on various factors, including raw material prices, exchange rates, FID decisions taken by project promoters, etc. These will be determined by commercial transactions.
“The EU-US trade agreement does not undermine the EU’s determination to decarbonise the bloc’s economies within a clear timeframe,” the Commission said. “While the agreement implies an increase in energy imports from the US over the next three years, it is fully consistent with the EC’s medium and long-term policy of diversifying energy sources and implementing the REPowerEU roadmap, so as to completely eliminate energy imports from Russia as soon as possible,” the statement added.
The EU remains fully committed to achieving climate neutrality by 2050 – the central objective of the European Green Deal. The European Commission has just proposed an updated climate law with an ambitious target of a 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.
