The U.S. would not be able to replace Russia’s gas supplies to Europe, the Permanent Representative of Russia to the E.U. Vladimir Chizhov said on August 17, 2017. “Even if the U.S. delivered the liquefied gas (LNG) to Europe free of charge, they just wouldn’t have a chance to replace Russia’s deliveries,” Ambassador Chizhov elaborated.

The Permanent Representative named three reasons for why the U.S. couldn’t become an alternative to Russia.

“In the United States, the export terminal for the shipment of LNG is in Louisiana. The U.S. is yet to construct a half-dozen terminals in different parts of the country. Second, there is not enough gas. Third, in Europe there aren’t a lot of terminals that are ready to accept the liquefied gas, and there aren’t a lot of tankers for transporting it,” Ambassador Chizhov noted.

In early August, President Donald Trump signed a bill for new sanctions against Russia. The document gives the President the power to impose sanctions on persons investing in the construction of Russian export pipelines to the tune of five million dollars or more per year or one million dollars at a time.

Officials in Berlin, Germany, called the new sanctions illegal, noting that the U.S. simply wants to clear out the competition to supply America’s energy exports. According to Ambassador Chizhov, the European Union prevailed on the U.S. to exempt certain Russian power projects from the new sanctions. As an example, thanks to the E.U.’s efforts, the maximum allowable stake in trans-border energy projects that Russian companies are allowed to hold has been increased from 10 percent to 33 percent.

Russia is the largest foreign supplier of gas to the European Union, which substantially depends on its imports of energy resources.

The U.S. is currently increasing its share of the market in supplying the liquefied natural gas in the E.U. The share of U.S. LNG supplies to the European Union has grown tenfold in the first quarter 2017 to six percent of the block’s energy mix. In the first quarter of the year the U.S. became the sixth largest supplier of LNG to the E.U.