If Congress helped Europe break its addiction to Russian energy, everyone would win — except Putin.
If Congress helped Europe break its addiction to Russian energy, everyone would win — except Putin.
T he best move Congress can make to help Ukraine is to stop Europe from funding both sides of the Russo–Ukrainian conflict by unleashing the power of American energy to save the Old Continent from Russian dependence.
Since the start of the war in February 2022, purchases by European Union countries have accounted for roughly $225 billion of Russia’s $916 billion in energy exports. China, Turkey, and India purchased most of the remainder, providing Putin with an economic lifeline. To put those numbers in perspective, Russia is estimated to have directly spent $250 billion on the war so far.
Now, in the third year of the Russo–Ukrainian war, Europe is still buying Russian energy worth almost $24 billion. This is, ironically, much more than the $20 billion in mostly financial aid that the European Union decided, in October 2024, to donate to Ukraine for the country’s budgetary, military, and reconstruction needs. Effectively, Europe is funding both sides of this conflict, but it’s somehow still paying Putin more.
Worse, European dependence on Russian energy increased in 2024, with imports of unsanctioned Russian liquefied natural gas rising from 15.2 million metric tons in the previous year to 16.5 million. Europe still spends around $1 billion a month directly on Russian energy, and indirectly far more given under-the-table trade. European Union countries’ energy imports from Russia, specifically those of France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium, reached an all-time high in 2024, according to the Financial Times.
And this is hitting Europeans in their pocketbooks.
When Ukraine didn’t immediately collapse in 2022, the Kremlin pinned its theory of victory on Europe’s running out of energy. Russian propaganda depicted the continent freezing over and relying on pet hamsters to generate electricity . . . then nearly starving to death and eating them. The average German or Belgian pays roughly double what the average American pays for electricity. In late August 2020, a megawatt hour of natural gas power cost around $8.71. In August 2022, at the peak of a price surge, Europeans were paying $302.70, an increase of 3,376 percent.
Congress can fix this and redirect the immense European demand for energy to the American market. America could help its European allies and get rich doing it.
Europe refuses to produce its own natural gas as most EU countries have either fully banned or heavily restricted hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, techniques. Not coincidentally, the Russian government long ago waged an information war against fracking after it “engaged actively” with environmental groups, in the words of former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. U.S. intelligence concurred, concluding in 2017 that Russia has promoted anti-fracking propaganda for years.
Europe doesn’t really need Russian gas, as existing American and Turkish LNG terminals and pipelines could deliver three times as much gas as Europe is currently importing from Russia. However, the Kremlin has repeatedly dumped cheap energy into European markets to choke off these alternatives, and various attempts by Ukraine to cut off the flow of Russian gas to Europe have been criticized by European capitals.
Already, the new administration has instructed the Department of Energy to end the Biden-era “pause” of LNG exports. Biden’s executive actions to block LNG exports, ban offshore drilling, and end most permitting for energy exploration were “significant and catastrophic” for the industry, according to the Independent Petroleum Association of America. As I predicted at the time, the legal uncertainty of Biden’s actions absolutely devastated American industry and effectively forced Europe back into Putin’s arms. While American LNG exports were becoming competitive against Russian gas in Europe, and demand had grown following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden bailed Putin out because of domestic pressure from environmentalists and social-media influencers.
Congress could ensure this never happens again. Regulatory certainty is a major factor in determining what corporations choose to invest in and build.
America currently has eight LNG export terminals, capable of shipping over 14.4 billion cubic feet of natural gas to Europe per day, enough to meet roughly half of the continent’s daily demand of 33 billion cubic feet. This is not enough, especially as demand for gas is highly seasonal and peaks in winter, and markets in Japan and South Korea consume roughly an additional 13 billion cubic feet per day. An additional 19 terminals, capable of boosting exports by another 34.7 billion cubic feet per day, have already been approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and are either under construction or awaiting investment. The capacity to produce another 6.2 billion cubic feet per day awaits FERC’s regulatory approval. Congress could help Europe break its addiction to Russian energy by instructing the FERC to fast-track this regulatory process and by enshrining the permitting and export process in law to prevent any future, politically motivated “pauses” of exports to America’s allies.
Everyone would win in such an arrangement.
Europe would win because a boost in U.S. LNG exports could see natural gas prices in the continent drop by 9 percent, according to a recent analysis by Aurora Energy Research. Europe would, also, be able to avoid the threat of new tariffs. Congressional Democrats would win by cutting the economic lifeline of Putin’s war, a cause they claim to care a great deal about. Ukraine would win because, without his European-funded war chest, Putin would be in a worse battlefield position. Congressional Republicans would win as most of the export terminals would likely be constructed in red states such as Louisiana, South Carolina, and Texas. And Donald Trump would win by following through on his campaign promise to restore American “energy dominance.”
The only loser would be Vladimir Putin.