Energy Secretary Rick Perry worked this week to cement a new partnership with Central European countries to push more U.S. natural gas into the European Union, while countering Russian energy dominance there.
Perry announced, in a tweet Wednesday, the creation of the U.S.-led “Partnership for Transatlantic Energy Cooperation” at the Three Seas Initiative Summit in Bucharest, Romania.
The partnership will help enable the nations of Central Europe to “work together to meet collective challenges while charting their own energy futures,” he said.
Perry closed the meeting with a speech that discussed “cutting dependence on Russia and the importance of diversifying energy sources,” the Energy Department said in a readout from the summit. Perry also met with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to discuss energy security.
Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette also held talks earlier this week with State Secretary Walter Lindner of Germany to discuss the Nord Stream II pipeline from Russia that the administration opposes. The administration wants Germany to diversify the continent’s energy supply away from Russia and toward U.S. liquefied natural gas imports.
Brouillette also co-hosted an industry roundtable “to discuss ways to jumpstart LNG exports to Germany,” the agency said.
Meanwhile, President Trump, meeting with Polish President Duda on Tuesday at the White House, made clear that moving the region away from Russian sources of energy was a top concern.
Trump also said he supports the Three Seas Initiative’s goal of reducing trade barriers in Europe to allow more U.S. natural gas flow to the continent. Trade barriers “make it very difficult for the United States,” Trump said at a joint press conference with Duda.
He said the U.S. “firmly supports” the goals of the summit, “and we are eager to expand commercial ties all across the region of Europe.”
Trump also said the two countries plan to establish the “U.S.-Poland Strategic Dialogue on Energy,” which will be a high-level collaboration focused on energy security.
President Duda said the “threat of absolute Russian domination in Europe, in terms of gas deliveries, is obvious.” The joint statement called for better coordination with Poland to counter Russia’s Nord Stream II pipeline, calling it a “mutual threat” for both countries.
Duda arrived in Washington on Tuesday direct from the talks in Bucharest with Perry and 11 other European Union member countries from the area that borders the Baltic, Adriatic, and Black Seas.
The main focus of the initiative is to jumpstart economic development in the region.
