The document does, however, note that 170 billion cubic meters of new LNG capacity are set to come online globally by 2027, including a doubling of North American capacity.
The plan also stresses that the EU executive will increase efforts to electrify its economy and consider expanding a platform for companies to jointly purchase supplies like biomethane, to replace supplies of traditional natural gas.
Nuclear is nigh
The new plan also targets the bloc’s lingering nuclear ties to Moscow, which supplies a fifth of the EU’s raw uranium and 38 percent of its enrichment capacity. Five countries — Finland, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic — still rely on Russian-built reactors.
To break that dependency, Brussels will present a new legal bill next month making enriched uranium from Russia “economically less viable” through trade measures, the plan states, and separately restrict new contracts signed between the EU’s uranium supply agency and Moscow.
It will also aim to clamp down on sanctions loopholes, including efforts to restrict Russia’s so-called shadow fleet — its mushrooming army of aging vessels with little-known insurance. The Commission said it wants to ink new deals with countries legally responsible for those tankers, allowing them to conduct “pre-authorized boarding operations” of the ships.
For now, the plan’s recommendations are non-binding, and its suggestions for future proposals will require the backing of a majority of EU countries before they are agreed.
And any ban on imports is likely to come up against stiff opposition, notably from Hungary and Slovakia’s Russia-friendly governments. Budapest and Bratislava have repeatedly torpedoed efforts to sanction Moscow’s atomic and gas sectors, while continuing to rely on Russia for over 80 percent of their oil and buying gas through the Russia-to-Turkey subsea TurkStream pipeline.
EU countries are set to discuss the proposal for the first time on Thursday.
