Berlin, NY Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) admits what the Americans have long criticized: Germany has blindly relied on energy supplies from Russia for too long, said the Greens politician at the start of his two-day trip to the USA.
Habeck wants to increase Germany’s energy supply security and diversify the supply sources. The US can be very helpful in this regard. That’s why Habeck is looking to close ranks with the Americans. He meets Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry and Amos Hochstein, Special Envoy for Energy Security at the US State Department.
You come from a phase in which Germany blindly relied on energy supplies from Russia. “We are now trying to position ourselves more broadly as quickly as possible, but above all to get away from fossil fuels.” That has become a security policy issue.
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Habeck must restore lost trust. The previous German energy policy was viewed extremely critically in the USA. This applies both to the heavy dependence on Russian gas and to some extent to the planned phase-out of nuclear power. Democrats and Republicans alike have long rejected the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea pipeline.
Criticism of Germany in the USA had increased so much before the attack on Ukraine that a few weeks ago even the German ambassador Emily Haber felt compelled to defend the German position in a very unusual television appearance on the conservative broadcaster Fox.
This applied both to the hesitant support of Ukraine and to Nord Stream 2. During his first visit to Washington, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, unlike US President Joe Biden, did not mention the word “Nord Stream 2”, which irritated many Americans.
The fact that former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder plays such a prominent role as a lobbyist in Putin’s Russia is also not well received in the United States. “Schröder is a national scandal,” John Herbst, the former US ambassador to Ukraine who now heads the Eurasia Center of the Atlantic Council think tank, told Handelsblatt. Herbst described Schröder as a “scoundrel” who would only make the situation in Germany worse.
But the most recent turnaround in Berlin has also made it onto the front pages of the major daily newspapers in the USA. The decisions of the traffic light coalition on Sunday to invest heavily in equipment for the Bundeswehr in view of the Russian attack on Ukraine, to supply Ukraine with weapons and to become independent of Russian gas supplies as quickly as possible met with a positive response from the Americans.
A few days earlier, Chancellor Scholz had stopped the certification process for Nord Stream 2. Together with the Western sanctions against Russia that have now been decided, the end of the line should be sealed.
The Greens, above all Economics Minister Habeck, are also committed. Contrary to concerns from within its own ranks, Habeck is campaigning for the construction of two terminals in Germany for the processing of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Own terminals would ease the situation
From the US perspective, the LNG terminals are indispensable for Germany. In order to ensure the energy supply of Europe and Germany, the Americans had spoken to various LNG producers in the world from Qatar to Australia in the past few weeks.
But in order to be able to use the gas in Germany, you need the terminals. LNG that lands in the Netherlands or Belgium can be fed into the trans-European gas network there and routed to Germany. However, the networks are not able to accommodate any amount, and the capacities of the LNG terminals are limited. Own terminals would ease the situation.
For LNG, the US was the world’s largest exporter for the first time, just overtaking Qatar, according to Bloomberg data in December. The new plants in Freeport, Texas, and in Sabine Pass, Louisiana, in particular have contributed to the increase in exports. In December, the US exported 13 percent of the gas it produced.
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Not least thanks to the controversial fracking technology and billions of dollars in investments in liquefaction plants and terminals, the USA has changed from an LNG importer to an LNG exporter in the past ten years.
Gas production in the US has increased by 70 percent since 2010. By the end of the year, when Venture Global’s Cacasieu Pass facility comes online, the United States will have the world’s largest export capacity.
According to the energy agency EIA, the maximum LNG capacity of US companies in November totaled 3.3 billion cubic meters per day. By the end of this year, that could be almost four billion cubic meters per day. To illustrate: A Q Max Cargo ship can transport around 266,000 cubic meters of LNG. That is enough to supply 75,000 US households with heating and kitchen gas for a year.
According to Bloomberg, 1,043 LNG cargo ships left the United States last year. Half of it went to Asia, a third to Europe. Recently, it has been more worthwhile for the Americans to export to Europe because LNG prices have risen more there than in Asia.
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