Europe’s LNG buildout signals brave new world

The EU’s new gas strategy may have wriggled free of complacency and insularity, but demand destruction and chokepoints are just some of the key risk factors

Dust may not have had time to settle on the newly laid gas infrastructure across Europe before the region may have to think again on its gas strategy. The EU, no longer with the comfort blanket of Russian pipeline gas, is now operating in the globalised LNG world. New uncertain dynamics over price, demand and supply have come to the fore. Europe’s gas infrastructure buildout “might be both expensive and a necessary insurance policy”, says Ben McWilliams, energy policy analyst at thinktank Bruegel. “It is clear that Europe was complacent and did not respect the need for redundant supply/capacity ahead of the Russia cuts,” he adds. Before the war in Ukraine, the EU consumed more than 500bn m³/