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The Trump administration and Qatar have warned the EU that it faces a gas supply crunch that would force up prices unless Brussels rewrites planned rules on methane emissions.
Washington and Doha said most global oil and gas exporters could not meet the draft regulation that would set monitoring and reporting standards across supply chains for methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
The complaints from the US and Qatar — the world’s top two liquefied natural gas exporters — came in a letter to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and European Council president António Costa ahead of a meeting of the bloc’s energy ministers on Friday.
At least two other big gas suppliers to Europe, Algeria and Nigeria, signed the letter drafted by the US and Qatar, which is due to be sent to European leaders on Tuesday.
The EU faces a “narrow window” to rewrite the rules because importers have already begun buying supplies for delivery in 2027, and “there is no viable path to compliance with the regulation”, wrote US energy secretary Chris Wright and Qatari energy minister Saad al-Kaabi in the draft letter seen by the FT.
“Because legal compliance remains paramount, exporters and importers alike are unwilling to enter into contractual agreements that knowingly violate EU law,” they wrote. “Significant supply and price impacts are a certainty.”
The intervention escalates a US-led effort to blunt the legislation. Andrew Puzder, the US ambassador to the EU, previously warned in the FT that the regulation could spark an energy crisis.
The European Commission has already signalled that it will water down the rules by issuing guidelines to member states not to penalise exporters until 2030.
Several member states want Brussels to go further, with the Czech Republic and Slovakia calling for a postponement of the rules for “at least three years”, according to another draft letter seen by the FT.
But the industry’s supply-crunch warning was challenged on Monday in modelling by consultancy Rystad Energy for Environmental Defense Fund Europe, which found that gas supplies compliant with the proposed rules were three times larger than the EU’s current imports.
Rystad found “no evidence” that the looming regulation was pushing up prices, which it said were higher due to the US and Israeli war in Iran.
Proponents of the legislation such as EDF Europe argue that it would help Europe’s energy security by spurring a shift away from fossil fuels.
The lobbying from the big fossil fuel exporters comes as the World Bank published a report on Tuesday showing that flaring by oil and gas producers — another form of greenhouse gas pollution — rose 6 per cent last year to 167bn cubic metres, the highest level since 2019.
Flaring contributes to climate change and wastes natural gas that could be used as fuel. The volume of gas flared by industry is worth about $54bn and exceeded the amount of LNG exported through the Strait of Hormuz last year.
Flaring is “not primarily a technical problem because the technical solutions are mostly there”, said Zubin Bamji, head of a World Bank programme to cut the pollution. “What is lacking is enforced regulations.”
