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EU Faces 250-Billion Euro Gap in Grid Investment Plans

“Without new approaches to financing and capital efficiency, TSOs may fall short of delivering the infrastructure needed to meet Europe’s climate and reliability goals,” the company said, identifying three problematic areas. These are, first, limitations to TSOs capacity to raise money via debt or equity; second, a tension between efforts to keep electricity costs low for consumers while ensuring a certain level of returns to investors in grid operators; and third, different expectations of these grid operators from governments, on the one hand, and investors, on the other.

US Overtakes Russia as EU No2 Gas Source

The 27-member bloc imported a total of 69 billion cubic meters (2.44 trillion cubic feet) of gas in the January-March period, down two percent quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year. Pipeline gas accounted for 55 percent or 38 Bcm while liquefied natural gas (LNG) contributed 45 percent or 31 Bcm, according to the Commission’s latest quarterly gas market report.

EU Set to Change Subsidy Rules for Energy Costs

“If Germany sinks, we all go with them,” one corporate lobbyist told Politico, pretty much summarizing the prevailing sentiment across the EU about its biggest economy, which has been teetering on the brink of recession, in large part because of high energy costs after it gave up cheap Russian pipeline gas and shut down its last operating nuclear reactors while doubling down on wind and solar—which are heavily subsidised.

Russian LNG Exports Dip Amid Sanctions and EU Clampdown

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports out of Russia fell by 3% in January through May from a year earlier, amid tighter EU restrictions on transshipment and U.S. sanctions on a new LNG project that can’t find buyers yet.
Russia’s LNG shipments dipped by 3% year-over-year to 13.2 million tons in the first five months of the year, Reuters reports, citing preliminary data from LSEG.

EU Issues Obligatory CO2 Storage Capacities for Top Oil Producers

Kurt Vandenberghe, the Commission’s director-general for climate action, commented, “Having extracted hydrocarbons and contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, it [the oil and gas industry] will now contribute to storing CO2 and help mitigate climate change. By combining their industrial know-how with faster permitting processes and robust financial support – including from the ETS-resourced Innovation Fund – we can make substantial progress in advancing industrial decarbonization and modernization in Europe”.

U.S. Resists EU Push to Lower Russian Oil Price Cap

A European official attending the G7 finance powwow in Banff, Canada, told Reuters that the U.S. Treasury team thinks market forces are already doing the heavy lifting. With Brent prices wobbling around $64—and Russia’s Urals blend clocking in at a $10 discount—Washington’s logic is that there’s no need to poke the bear when the bear’s already limping.

How Turkey Could Thwart the EU’s Plan to Ban Russian Gas

Hungary and Slovakia are currently getting their Russian natural gas supply via the TurkStream pipeline that runs under the Black Sea to Turkey and then on to Eastern Europe. According to one Bulgarian energy analyst from the progressive think-tank Center for the Study of Democracy, the existence of this pipeline can prolong the European Union’s reliance on Russian gas. Indeed, it has already increased Russian gas imports to Central and Southeastern Europe from some 30% back in 2021 to over 50% as of last year, Martin Vladimirov wrote in an op-ed for Reuters.