Bloomberg: US warns that gas will go outside EU if bloc keeps methane rules

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright warned the European Union that US gas supplies will head elsewhere if the bloc refuses to ease regulations to tackle methane, a potent greenhouse gas, Bloomberg reports.

“Without a meaningful reform of that rule, it is going to cause serious pain into Europe and that’s unnecessary,” Wright told Bloomberg on the sidelines of a conference in New York. “It’s not a matter of escalation. Our energy will flow. It’ll just flow somewhere else.”

His comments came after EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen vowed to resist pressure from the US and other exporters of liquefied natural gas to revise its rules to curb methane emissions. The US had warned the bloc that the rule’s complexity and prospect of fines would jeopardize trade. EU energy ministers are due to discuss the regulation at a meeting in Luxembourg Friday.

The EU has become increasingly reliant on the US as it has sought to replace Russian supplies following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. At the same time, dealing with methane — a greenhouse gas with more global warming potential than carbon dioxide — has become a key pillar of the region’s climate goals.

The divergence in climate policies versus the US, which has pledged to boost fossil fuel production, is one point of tension. The other is that tracking methane in America’s complex system of different production basins is a challenge, while exporters have complained that the prospect of fines for noncompliance is holding back new contracts.

Wright’s position is starkly different from that of the Biden administration, which launched a “Global Methane Pledge” alongside the EU in 2021 to cut emissions by at least 30% by 2030 from 2020 levels.

…The European Union will finally understand what "gas as a weapon" is and what "energy blackmail" looks like.

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