A coming global glut of liquefied natural gas should give Europe a stronger case to regulate methane emissions — and make US exporters more competitive, a report from the Environmental Defense Fund and Rystad Energy argues.
The European Union was the world’s top LNG importer in 2024, fueled by its race away from Russian pipeline gas. And while the LNG market has been tight for the past few years, many new export terminals will come online soon, pushing the market to oversupply by 2028, the report argues. That imbalance will give the EU considerable leverage to demand emissions cuts and better reporting from its suppliers. And since many US gas companies are already at the leading edge of methane abatement, they stand to gain market share from less scrupulous rivals like Algeria and Qatar.
Still, Charlie Riedl, executive director of the Center for LNG, the industry’s US trade group, told Semafor he remains concerned Europe’s methane rules will “cause uncertainty for both US LNG exporters as well as European importers and will undermine energy security at a critical time as the EU transitions away from Russian energy.”