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Under President Donald Trump’s leadership, the United States has become the world’s leading energy producer and the largest exporter of LNG, Savage declared at the Budapest LNG Summit on May 8.
“This isn’t just a statistic; it’s a strategic asset for our allies and partners alike. The Trump administration has made American energy leadership a cornerstone of our national security strategy. We’ve achieved record-breaking LNG exports, expanded access to federal lands for energy production, and invested in the infrastructure needed to deliver reliable, affordable energy to markets around the world,” she asserted to a room packed with perhaps 150 gas and energy specialists.
And just in case any had failed to grasp her message, she underlined: “American energy leadership is back under President Trump.”
This matters because energy security is an essential element of national security, and not only Hungary, but all of Europe has been learning this lesson the hard way, Savage argued.
“For too long, Europe has been vulnerable to energy coercion from adversarial actors who have weaponized energy supplies to achieve political objectives,” she said, though without citing any specific examples.
Savage, who served as Director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Russian Affairs before transferring to Budapest, went on to provide the antidote to any such possible threat to Hungary.
“The United States offers a stronger alternative: a reliable, transparent, market-based energy partnership with a trusted ally […] American LNG comes from a stable democracy with rule of law, transparent markets, and long-term commitments to our partners. When you buy American LNG, you’re also getting energy security,” she stated.
As a first step, Hungary has committed to purchasing 400 million cubic meters (mcm) of U.S. LNG annually over five years, Savage noted. While this amounts to only 5% of Hungary’s annual demand of 8 billion cubic meters (bcm), Savage stressed that this is “Just an initial step. There is so much more that the United States and Hungary can do together to ensure that Hungary has a reliable, affordable, and diversified natural gas supply.”
Borbála Takácsné Tóth, a senior research associate at the Regional Center for Energy Policy Research (Rekk), a Budapest-based think tank, confirmed the importance of the U.S. role in helping make up the shortfall after Putin’s war in Ukraine pushed Europe to decouple from Russian gas sources.
“We are really grateful that in 2022, the U.S. helped us to replace the missing Russian gas in Europe,” she said, noting that Russia’s share of supplies to Europe had shrunk from 43% in 2021 to just 12% by 2025. In the same period, American LNG imports expanded from 6% to 26%.
Moreover, if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed and the EU ceases Russian gas imports, Tóth cited a Rekk study indicating that the share of U.S. LNG imports could jump to as high as 37% of total European demand.
This begs a question: can the United States under Trump be trusted not to misuse such market dominance? Tóth, for one, is far from sure.
Noting that the U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran, launched without consulting America’s European allies, had already caused “immediate problems,” she said: “We see that the U.S. might really use energy as a weapon. I’m not saying that [it will], I’m just putting a question mark there […] and I’m quoting here the U.S. National Security strategy from 2025, which explicitly mentions that ‘expanding our energy exports enables us to project power.’ This geopolitization reminds some of Russian pipeline politics in Europe.”
“Ten years ago, only about 81 ships in the world used LNG as fuel; the rest were using heavy [highly polluting] bunker fuels. That has increased tenfold in ten years, and the places where ocean-going ships can now be fueled with LNG have increased from just 10 ports to more than 220 today. And that not only reduces carbon emissions, it also reduces [toxic] sulfur and nitrogen oxides.” Jefferson Edwards, vice president, Shell Energy
“I can see the storage levels, and when you come from Asia, it’s worrying, and even if you have peace now [in the Middle East], it’s going to be a fragile peace; the worries will continue. I don’t want to sit here and say doom and gloom, but I have never seen two supply shocks [Ukraine and Hormuz] of this magnitude unfolding at the same time. We’ve actually had three supply shocks: EU methane regulation is my third. […] It’s the wrong time to implement this. It’s the law, so we have to deal with it. But I think it’s a very unfair law at this time, because in Europe we have to be really careful that we are not losing the grip, because industries are dying in Europe. Competitiveness has to come back in one way or the other, and that we can only achieve with lower energy costs.” Ralf Dickgreber, head of global LNG and biomass, Engie
The U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran led to counterstrikes on Gulf states, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has had a profound effect on the price of natural gas worldwide, including Europe, Gergely Molnár, gas analyst with the International Energy Agency, told the summit in his keynote opening address.
“We estimate that the region’s natural gas production has plummeted by 25% year-on-year since the start of the conflict,” he said.
Yet, with around 90% of the flows through the strait going to Asia, and only 10% of exit flows going to Europe, accounting for just 3% of the continent’s natural gas demand, “There is a tendency in Europe to say this is mainly an Asian problem,” Molnár noted. Not so.
“We are living in an increasingly globalized gas market […] This means that the supply and demand trends of one region can transfer to other markets and influence their price dynamics,” he argued.
In other words, wholesale gas prices in Europe are roughly equally affected. While increased LNG production in North America and Africa, plus some demand switching, has eased pressure on European wholesale prices, the problem has not gone away.
“One key question ahead of the summer will be Europe’s storage injection campaign. Reaching 80% of working capacity would require similar injection rates to last year, but in April, we see that injections stood about 20% below last year’s levels. So, we are not really on track to reach the 80% fill levels,” Molnár said.
This is reflective of the supply conditions, but also the negative seasonal spreads, which are clearly reducing the commercial incentives to put natural gas into underground storage, Molnár said. “It seems that the European storage campaign will be more challenging and probably more expensive than expected.”
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of May 22, 2026.
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