Interior secretary: US wants to strengthen energy ties with Greece

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told reporters in Athens that the U.S. is looking to strengthen its energy relations with Greece. This comes as the Trump Administration works to reduce Russia's gas and oil supplies to Europe.

Burgum was in Europe this past week to sign energy deals that the U.S. believes will increase its influence in Europe while reducing Russia's.

Greece announced on Wednesday that a consortium, including the oil giant Chevron, had bid for exploration of natural gas in their waters.

Burgum, the US Secretary of State, told Greek Prime Minister KyriakosMitsotakis that "the Trump administration has several goals in relation to energy. One of them is energy abundance. This means we will provide energy to allies and friends so they don't have to purchase from our enemies," Burgum said during a meeting. He said that the United States was fully committed to replace Russian gas with U.S. Gas.

The EU has reduced its Russian oil imports 90% due to a ban on the seaborne shipment of crude oil, but Hungary and Slovakia continue to import through pipelines. EU data indicates that Europe will purchase 13% of their gas from Russia in this year. This is down from the 45% it purchased before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

The U.S. pressed the EU to speed up the phase-out of Russian fossil fuels in order to reduce the funds available to Moscow. In order to do this, the U.S. is urging the EU to export more of its abundant shale oil and gas reserves.

Burgum visited on Thursday the LNG terminal in Revithoussa, near Athens. The terminal receives regular spot and term cargoes from U.S. suppliers.

In the first six months of 2018, Greece increased its imports of U.S. LNG by 95 percent.

The controversial maritime agreement signed in 2019 has caused tensions between Greece and Turkey. Chevron's interest in some blocks offshore Crete overlaps one of the disputed zones.

The Greek government has interpreted this as tacit support from the United States for its maritime borders.

Mitsotakis said to Burgum: "It is an interesting coincidence that your visit comes a day after Chevron submitted its interest in starting exploratory work south of Crete. This confirms the sovereignty rights of the Hellenic Republic of Greece in that area." (Reporting and editing by Angeliki Kooutantou, Edward McAllister and Renee Maltezou; Writing and editing by Edward McAllister and Kirsten Donovan, Margueritachoy and Marguerita Choy).

(source: Reuters)