The EU has spent 7 per cent less on oil and gas from the US over the past four months despite making a pledge to Donald Trump to purchase $750bn of American energy over the next three years.
While the bloc bought higher volumes of US liquefied natural gas since its trade deal with Washington in August, oil and gas prices have fallen, reducing the overall value compared with the same period last year.
EU imports of liquid natural gas and oil totalled $29.6bn through September to December, according to an estimate by energy consultancy Kpler.
Gillian Boccara, senior director at Kpler, said the nonbinding trade deal had done little to prompt additional purchases of US commodities.
Commodity purchases were negotiated bilaterally and driven by economics, including freight costs and margins, rather than political pledges, she said, adding that the purchase commitment was “unrealistic”.
Annual imports to the EU stood at $73.7bn, less than one-third of the value required to meet the $750bn energy purchase commitment for 2026 to 2028. Nuclear energy products such as uranium, which are part of the trade deal, account for less than 1 per cent of EU energy trade with the US.
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Argus Media, a price reporting agency, said that if the EU replaced all Russian gas with US LNG, it would probably import about $29bn a year over the next three years, or just 23 per cent of the value required under the deal.
As a result, gas prices would have to quadruple to $37.3 per million British thermal units by 2028 for the EU to meet the trade target — a scenario that runs counter to market expectations. 2028 futures are trading at about $8.2 per mmbtu, according to Argus, compared with about $10 per mmbtu currently.
Prices last reached $37.3 per mmbtu in December 2022, a year when prices and EU purchases of LNG surged during an energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Boccara of Kpler said that even if the EU were to replace all Russian gas with US supplies, it would still not be enough to triple the import value. “We just can’t buy into the clear rationale other than obviously [the trade deal] is a way to reduce [US] tariffs,” she added. “We just can’t see the math working out.”
Markets are expecting an oversupply and lower gas prices in the coming years, as countries including the US, Qatar and Canada plan to increase production. The potential for a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire has also cooled market sentiment.
Martin Senior of Argus said that both the EU and the US lacked sufficient import and export infrastructure, such as storage tanks and regasification systems, to significantly expand their energy trade.
The EU would need to increase import capacity by more than 50 per cent, while the US would have to more than double its export capacity to commit to the trade deal, he said.
The lack of economic rationale had made the agreement look like a way for the European bloc to buy time and postpone a direct confrontation with the US president — whose term ends in January 2029 — while building up defences against Russia, said one former member of the European parliament with long experience in energy policy.
“The hour of reckoning must be postponed. And maybe the war [will be] over when the hour of reckoning comes,” said the former MEP.
The European Commission has said it procured about €200bn ($236bn) of US energy products in the first 11 months of 2025. It increased imports of oil and gas, in particular US LNG, and said it expected to buy a total of 70bn cubic metres of US LNG in 2025, up from 45bcm the year before.
“This trend will continue in the future, with at least nine new long-term contracts for US LNG signed by EU buyers this year,” a spokesperson said.
It was unclear how much of these future purchases were included in the commission’s total figure. It also included a Polish deal to buy three nuclear reactors from Westinghouse in a €42bn power station project.
