Europe to Pay More for US Gas Rather Than Russian: Energy Agency

WASHINGTON, December 19 (Sputnik) — Europe’s plans to diversify energy supplies away from Russian sources towards American liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports should not be exaggerated as price and availability remain problems for the importers, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) told Sputnik News Agency.

“We [Europe] have LNG that might be coming from the United States, but it won’t be before 2016, and at this moment we know that LNG comes at a price, and the price of LNG is higher than piped Russian gas,” Maria van der Hoeven commented Thursday on European plans to diversify away from Russian energy sources.

“So let’s not make a dramatized picture more than it is,” she added.

Nearly 30 percent of European’s natural gas supplies come from Russia, the IEA director said. While all countries are interested in diversifying energy supplies and energy routes, “there will always, for a long time, be gas coming from Russia to Europe,” van der Hoeven added.

Due to the price and availability of American LNG, the LNG import terminals of a number of European countries are “underutilized” and are prepared for only 25 percent use, van der Hoeven said.

The conflict in Ukraine has led Europe to more seriously consider the degree to which they rely on Russian imports of oil and natural gas, as the European Commission discussed the issue on a summit in June.

According to the US government’s Energy Information Association, approximately 16 percent of the total natural gas, consumed by Europeans, traveled through the network of Ukrainian pipelines.

The boom in US oil and natural gas has resulted in foreign export contracts and led the US Department of Energy (DOE) to authorize a number of new LNG export terminals across the United States. According to DOE estimates, US LNG exports will begin in 2016.