The United States Department of Energy has announced that the American government and companies have signed agreements worth over $50 billion with Central and Eastern European countries. Secretary Chris Wright – who on Wednesday attended the Three Seas Initiative conference in Ragusa, Croatia – stated that “President Trump is ushering in a new era of cooperation for Central and Eastern Europe. These partnerships are based on our mutual support for an energy expansion program.”
The United States’ goal is to strengthen, through infrastructure, their presence in the Balkans region and beyond, in order to counter Russian influence: Eastern Europe, also due to its historical ties with the USSR which have often linked it to Soviet plants and technologies, has found it more difficult to free itself from Russian energy compared to other areas of the continent.
AMERICAN LNG IN ALBANIA
In Tirana, Albania, the American ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle signed a twenty-year agreement (worth $20 billion) between Venture Global and Aktor Lng USA for the export of liquefied gas to Albania. The United States is the largest gas producer in the world and the main supplier of liquefied fuel to the European Union: accounting for almost 58 percent of total imports.
A PIPELINE FOR AMERICAN GAS BETWEEN CROATIA AND BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
Secretary of Energy Wright, on the other hand, confirmed U.S. support for an agreement between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia for the construction of a pipeline that will transport American gas to Bosnia received from the liquefaction terminal on Krk, an island in Croatia.
The project – aimed precisely at reducing Bosnia’s dependence on Russian gas – will be financed and managed by the American company Aafs Infrastructure and Energy: headed by Jesse Binnall, a former lawyer for Donald Trump, and Joseph Flynn, brother of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Aafs has spoken of an investment of 1.5 billion euros.
NOT ONLY GAS: COLLABORATION ON NUCLEAR AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The United States and Croatia have also signed a joint statement of cooperation on nuclear energy. Furthermore, the American investment group Pantheon Atlas has signed a letter of intent with the Croatian engineering company Rade Koncar for the development of a data center for artificial intelligence in Croatia, worth $50 billion. Work is expected to start in 2027 and the facility should become operational in 2027, with a computing capacity of 1 gigawatt.
