Trump Pushes ‘Peace Pipelines’ to Boost Exports of Climate-Busting LNG to Europe

In the midst of a war in Iran and skyrocketing energy prices at home, the Trump administration is pushing to boost sales of U.S. liquefied natural gas across Central and Eastern Europe. 

Energy Secretary Chris Wright and other U.S. officials announced this week that they had reached agreements aimed at boosting the construction of “Trump Peace Pipelines” across the region to facilitate more LNG exports.

“President Trump is unleashing a new era of cooperation for Central and Eastern Europe,” Wright said in a news release. “These partnerships are rooted in our mutual support for an energy addition agenda—more jobs, more opportunity, and more investment.”

The announcement came this week at the Three Seas Initiative Summit in Dubrovnik, Croatia, a gathering of 13 nations surrounding the Baltic, Black and Adriatic seas. 

According to the Department of Energy, the United States now produces as much natural gas as Russia, China and Iran combined, while leading the world in LNG exports. The department said LNG exports are on track to “more than double” over the next decade. 

But that gas carries a steep environmental toll on many fronts. The gas comes primarily from fracking wells. It must be supercooled to -161 degrees Celsius to reach a liquid state for transport, a highly energy-intensive process. Then it is typically shipped on tankers thousands of miles across the globe. Methane, a potent greenhouse gas, leaks at nearly every step of the process. 

In 2024, Cornell University professor Robert Howarth found that only 34 percent of LNG’s greenhouse gas emissions come from burning the fuel to generate electricity, with the rest occurring earlier in the process. Howarth concluded that LNG’s carbon footprint “equals or exceeds that of coal.”

LNG export terminal construction has significantly contributed to localized pollution in places like Louisiana. 

James Hiatt, a former oil refinery worker who founded the environmental group For a Better Bayou in 2023, said the construction of new export terminals in coastal Louisiana is dramatically impacting life in those areas. He said air pollution, siltation from dredging, heavy tanker traffic and other problems are devastating a community that receives little benefit from the industry due to local tax incentives offered to developers. Fishermen in the area have blamed LNG activity for declining fish and shrimp harvests in recent years. 

“They’re paying more and more to be polluted and dumped upon and get no benefit from it,” Hiatt said. “We don’t talk about climate here much, but the reality is, the more we extract carbon from underground and add it to the atmosphere, the more chaos we will see.”

The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen says LNG exports also contribute to rising U.S. energy costs by putting the country’s gas reserves up for sale to the highest international bidder.

“That’s really not good for the working people of this country,” Hiatt said. “It might be good for a few wealthy folks, but it’s not good for America. It’s more like ‘America Last’ policy, not ‘America First.’”

The European Three Seas agreements announced Wednesday include a memorandum of understanding to advance pipelines and other energy infrastructure in Central and Eastern Europe; a statement of support for a pipeline between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina; a joint statement between the U.S. and Croatia to enhance nuclear technology in the country through small modular reactors; the announcement of Project Pantheon, a $50 billion data center project developed by a U.S. company in Croatia; and a statement of intent by Westinghouse Electric Co. to launch a design study for a small modular nuclear plant in Slovakia.  

Much of the region previously depended on Russia for natural gas, and much of it still runs on Russian gas transported through Turkey since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

U.S. oil companies have increasingly stepped in to fill the void, according to Ana Maria Jaller-Makarewicz, lead energy analyst for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis in Europe. 

Jaller-Makarewicz and IEEFA developed the North American LNG Export Tracker, which monitors global LNG shipments, and the EU Gas Flows Tracker, which follows European natural gas sources. 

According to the group, U.S. LNG exports to Europe have nearly tripled since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, rising from 2.51 million metric tons that month to 6.16 million metric tons in December 2025. 

“In 2022, we were depending almost 50 percent from only one supplier [Russia] on gas, and that already created a big crisis in Europe,” Jaller-Makarewicz told Inside Climate News. 

Since then, she said, Europe has pursued two paths to reduce dependence on Russia. One is to diversify by adding LNG imports to the mix, and the other aims to reduce consumption through efficiency and increased use of renewable energy. She said the EU is on the verge of trading a dependency on Russian gas for a dependency on U.S.-produced LNG, and should consider investing in localized renewable energy sources rather than focusing solely on LNG.  

“It’s expensive and it’s not offering us any security supply,” she said. “Right now, our LNG dependency is our weakest point.”

Jaller-Makarewicz said U.S. LNG is not always guaranteed, with shipments sometimes rerouted to Asia or delayed to fetch a better price before delivery.

“We are becoming more fragile, more dependent on external factors,” she said. “The only thing we can control is our demand. We cannot control the supply.”