Germany is unlikely to buy the LNG that Washington has offered it as an alternative to Russian gas as Berlin doesn't need it, the German newspaper Handelsblatt wrote.
The newspaper wrote that the only reason that the German chancellor would be interested in US LNG would be to appease US President Donald Trump ahead of crucial trade talks between the US and the EU.
At the same time, Handelsblatt rebuts point-by-point the arguments of US envoy to Germany Richard Grenell as to why Berlin would need American LNG. As Grenell noted himself, Germany doesn't have an LNG terminal and building one on the North Sea coast could be a project so costly that it has already been labeled a "white elephant" by critics, according to the media outlet.
Handelsblatt further noted that Germany plans to abandon fossil fuels as a source of energy by 2050, meaning that the terminal will be rendered useless in just 32 years.
Moreover, the European country already has sufficient fuel for the transitional period — natural gas, which produces less emissions, costs significantly less than LNG and will be easily obtainable via Nord Stream-2. The newspaper also mentioned that LNG supplies would send hundreds of "polluting tankers" across the Atlantic to Germany, which is trying to become a green country.
Handelsblatt noted that natural gas accounts for only 22% of Germany's energy supplies and Russia's gas fills roughly 1/3 of the country's gas needs.
