Russian gas rejecters will repent – Serbian president

Countries that have banned Russian natural gas could soon have to beg Moscow to resume deliveries after Washington stops sending its liquefied natural gas (LNG), Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic predicted on Tuesday.

Speaking at the UN Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, Vucic suggested that in three or four years, the US could completely stop its LNG exports to meet its own increased demand, caused by energy-hungry artificial intelligence and the rapid spread of charging stations for electric vehicles.

The Serbian leader claimed that if such a thing happens, those who have banned Russian gas “will stand in line before Moscow to ask: ‘give us back gas so we can survive the winter.’”

Vucic noted that since the victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential election last week, the oil price has dipped, while gas prices have surged.

After the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, the EU moved to ban cheap Russian pipeline gas and replaced it with much more costly LNG. Last year, the US was the largest LNG supplier to the EU, representing almost 50% of its total LNG imports, having tripled the supply volume since 2021, according to European Council data.

Previously, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that the EU “lacks brains” and that its leaders continue to take “politicized” and “ill-considered” steps that “work to the detriment of their own interests and only benefit US politics and economy.”

Putin specifically criticized EU politicians for abandoning Russian gas amid sanctions linked to the Ukraine conflict. He described such policies as “incomprehensible”, particularly as the same officials have “made so much noise” about green goals while restarting coal plants to offset the energy crisis that they themselves had caused.

The Financial Times warned last week that the EU’s decision to ban Russian pipeline gas and increase its reliance on LNG could put the bloc’s energy supplies at risk this winter. “Anything can happen. You just need a few supply disruptions and things could go horribly wrong,” one analyst told the paper.