Where Data Tells the Story
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The European Union has signed a deal to import $750 billion worth of liquefied natural gas, oil and nuclear fuels from the United States by 2028. The agreement, announced on July 27 by U.S. President Donald Trump and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, is part of a wider trade package under which the EU will accept a unilateral U.S. tariff of 15 percent on most of its exports to the U.S., while also committing to $600 billion in investments to the country.
As the following chart shows, the EU has greatly reduced its reliance on Russian energy. Before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia accounted for 45 percent of EU gas imports, at 150.2 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 2021. By 2024, this had fallen to 51.7 bcm, representing 19 percent of imports. That decline has changed course in the past year though, with imports from Russia having seen an uptick in 2023, despite the EU’s earlier implementation of measures to diversify away from Russian gas by 2027 under the REPowerEU plan. The increase was largely due to increased imports into Italy, Czechia and France, according to Ember.
To cover the 98.5 bcm shortfall left by reduced Russian supply, the EU has leaned more heavily on other exporters. Last year, Norway delivered 91.1 bcm of gas to the EU, up 15 percent from 2021, which represented 33.4 percent of the EU’s total imports. U.S. gas shipments increased by 139 percent over the same period, reaching 45.1 bcm, or 16.5 percent of the total. Other important partners last year included Algeria (39.2 bcm), Qatar (11.8 bcm), Azerbaijan (11.7 bcm) and the United Kingdom (11.7 bcm). Despite these shifts, overall EU gas imports in 2024 were still 61.4 bcm lower than in 2021.
According to Reuters, the EU will further ramp up purchases of U.S. oil, natural gas and coal, with trade rising from about $75 billion in 2024 to $250 billion annually over the next three years. Eurostat data from the first quarter of 2025 shows that the U.S. is already the EU’s top supplier of oil, accounting for 15 percent of imports by value and the leading source of LNG with a 50.7 percent share . The U.S. is also the EU’s second-largest coal supplier, providing 31.3 percent of trade by value, behind Australia at 33.4 percent.