The unfolding political crisis between Ukraine and Russia poses an immediate gas supply security risk for Europe, but especially for Central Eastern Europe (CEE), the Baltic States, and South East Europe (SEE). This new issue brief, authored by Péter Kaderják, László Paizs, Adrienn Selei, and Borbála Tóth of the Regional Centre for Energy Policy Research aims to evaluate the potential impact of US liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports if natural gas supplies to CEE are severed by either unintended developments or intended actions. 

pdfRead the Issue Brief (PDF)

This issue brief also serves as an input report for the American Energy Prowess in a Strategic Foreign Policy Perspective conference. The authors lay out a framework for analyzing the potential impacts that non-FTA-approved US LNG could have on CEE gas supply security in the short term (one year), mid term (up to 2020), and in the longer term.

A set of failure- and embargo-type supply security scenarios for CEE are proposed, with the preliminary analysis of modeling results seeking to determine the supply-disruption scenarios that will influence wholesale natural gas price developments in the European Union and CEE enough to attract US LNG shipments to the European Union on a commercial basis. In the short-term scenarios, US LNG is represented by Kenai LNG in Alaska. In the mid-term scenarios, new US LNG enters the 2014 gas infrastructure overnight. A preliminary game-theoretic framework is used to further analyze the longer-term significance of US LNG for CEE gas supply security.