The US energy secretary says the quiet part out loud: the tributary $750 billion in energy purchases the EU has promised in its Trump deal is meant to lock Europe into “long-term” energy dependence.
The US energy secretary says the quiet part out loud: the tributary $750 billion in energy purchases the EU has promised in its Trump deal is meant to lock Europe into “long-term” energy dependence.
This is, as it has been said several times over (including here on Lemmy if I am not mistaken), very likely unachievable.
The EU imports of U.S. energy consists currently mainly of crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG). The EU also buys coal from the US, mainly metallurgical coal that is used to produce steel, although volumes are quite low. (Nuclear was not mentioned in this EU-US negotiation, and even if we include refined oil into the calculation, it wouldn’t change much as US exports of refined oil to the EU add up to a number in the lower double-digit billions in 2024.)
Of these three relevant energy sources - crude oil, LNG, metallurgical coal - the EU’s total imports reached a combined value of USD 64 billion in 2024. This is some 26% of the required USD 250 billion it should now buy from the US alone.
What is more important, however, is that US exports of these three energy sources total USD 166 billion in 2024, which is 66% of the proposed volume. This means that even if the EU bought the United States’ entire export volume - and even if the US energy companies would be able to ramp up production quickly enough to meet the demand desired by Trump - it fell still short of the proposed USD 250 billion.
All analysts agree that these numbers will never show up.
Most commodities are traded as futures. One can buy billions worth of futures today, with delivery date far in the future?