The pressure is part of Trump’s broader goal to ramp up fossil fuel production and exports. Within hours of returning to office, the president moved to scrap a Biden administration-era freeze on permits for new liquefied natural gas drilling projects
Itkonen cautioned that while the EU executive itself “is not buying or selling LNG or any other fuels ourselves,” its staffers would talk with Trump officials.
“We need to establish contact with them and see how to move forward,” she said. “But concretely, we are not starting from scratch — this has been something that at the highest level both the EU and the U.S. have had discussions about LNG. What we’ve done over the years from the EU side is to make sure the LNG infrastructure is existing so that companies can buy this LNG.”
The U.S. is already the EU’s second-largest gas supplier and largest source of LNG — a result of Russia’s decision to cut supplies following its invasion of Ukraine. Thus far in 2025, EU countries have imported over half of their LNG from America.
However, Europe’s imports of the supercooled fuel from Russia have also surged in recent weeks, hitting record highs for the first half of the month, amid a cold snap across the continent.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has previously backed the idea of buying more U.S. fuel to eradicate its Russian alternative.
