The European Union is prepared to discuss with U.S. President-elect Trump boosting economic ties, including in the energy sector, an EU spokesperson told Reuters on Friday, hours after Trump threatened to impose “tariffs all the way” on the bloc if it doesn’t buy large volumes of American oil and gas.
The EU is ready to discuss common interests in the energy sector with the U.S. as Europe is looking to phase out imports of Russian energy and diversify its sources of supply, the EU spokesperson told Reuters.
Earlier on Friday, President-elect Trump said that the EU should buy more oil and gas from the United States or risk tariffs.
“I told the European Union that they must make up their tremendous deficit with the United States by the large scale purchase of our oil and gas,” Trump posted on social media platform Truth Social.
“Otherwise, it is TARIFFS all the way!!!”
The United States is already the biggest supplier of LNG to Europe.
Now the Trump administration could leverage LNG as a bargaining chip in trade negotiations with Europe, consultancy Rystad Energy said last month.
Tariff negotiations between the U.S. and the EU may well involve the EU buying a lot more U.S. LNG.
Shortly after Trump was elected U.S. President, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in early November that the EU could replace what’s left of Russian gas imports with imports of LNG from the United States.
LNG “is one of the topics that we touched upon,” von der Leyen said at the time, commenting on a phone call with President-elect Trump she had.
“We still get a whole lot of LNG via Russia, from Russia. And why not replace it with American LNG, which is cheaper, and brings down our energy prices,” von der Leyen said.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
Energy News Beat