ExxonMobil expects the European Union to sign multi-decade U.S. gas contracts under its pledge to buy billions of dollars of American energy, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
The EU in July pledged to buy $750 billion of U.S. energy by 2028 as part of a sweeping trade pact with Washington.
The EU declined to comment to Reuters.
Peter Clarke, senior vice president of Exxon’s liquefied natural gas business, told the FT that Europe’s expanding LNG infrastructure made it “logical” to commit to longer-term supply, noting Exxon sells about 80% of its LNG under such contracts.
Europe is now “the most important market” for U.S. LNG exports, and the next step will be for the continent “to figure out how it supports long-term contracting,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.
The U.S. supplied 50% of the EU’s liquefied natural gas imports in 2024, along with 17% of oil and 35% of coal, according to Eurostat. Any expansion in energy trade is likely to center on LNG, with the U.S. the world’s top exporter of the fuel.
“We have seen in the data quite a big increase in LNG imports to Europe, year on year, it’s up about 20 per cent,” Clarke told FT, adding that 55% of the imports were from the United States.
(Reporting by Preetika Parashuraman in Bengaluru; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala and Nivedita Bhattacharjee)