Sputnik: Europe to Pay More for US Gas Rather Than Russian: Energy Agency

Europe’s plans to diversify energy supplies away from Russian sources towards American liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports should not be exaggerated as price and availability remain problems for the importers, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) told Sputnik News Agency.

“We [Europe] have LNG that might be coming from the United States, but it won’t be before 2016, and at this moment we know that LNG comes at a price, and the price of LNG is higher than piped Russian gas,” Maria van der Hoeven commented Thursday on European plans to diversify away from Russian energy sources.

“So let’s not make a dramatized picture more than it is,” she added. Nearly 30 percent of European’s natural gas supplies come from Russia, the IEA director said. While all countries are interested in diversifying energy supplies and energy routes, “there will always, for a long time, be gas coming from Russia to Europe,” van der Hoeven added.
MORE