Central Europe requests American gas supply

The ambassadors of the V4 countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) to the United States have made a plea to U.S. House Speaker John Boehner for the United States to export natural gas to Central and Eastern Europe to ease the region’s dependence of gas supply from Russia.

The letter by the V4 ambassadors urging the United States to export natural gas to Central and Eastern Europe noted that the region’s dependence on gas imports from a ‘single supplier’, referring to Russia, is between 70% and 100%, and urged the US to remove bureaucratic hurdles for the approval of gas export licenses to non-FTA countries, the Hungarian news agency MTI reported.

“The presence of US natural gas would be much welcome in Central and Eastern Europe, and Congressional action to expedite [liquefied natural gas] exports to America’s allies would come at a critically important time for the region,” the letter said.

John Boehner issued a response in which he expressed hope that President Barack Obama would direct the Secretary of Energy to approve pending gas export requests. He pressed the president to “do everything possible to use American energy to reduce the dependency on Russia for our friends in Europe and around the globe”.