French consumers have been faced with rising gas prices for several months, while the Ukrainian crisis has raised fears about France’s supply of Russian gas. Fabien Roussel affirms that the United States is taking advantage of this to push their exports of liquefied gas to France: Asked about CNews, he adds: “I discovered in the specialized press that France, via Engie, imports American shale gas resulting from the splitting of the earth which pollutes the soil“. It’s true. Le Vrai du Faux explains why.
It was the American financial information site S&P Global which first revealed the existence of an order from French Engie, citing sources at the American Department of Energy. The French energy giant concluded an agreement in 2021 with the Texas company Chenière which produces liquefied natural gas. The gas leaves from a terminal located in Corpus Christi, south of Houston, where it is liquefied to be loaded onto LNG carriers. The ships cross the Atlantic and the gas is landed in the French terminal of Montoir-de-Bretagne in Loire-Atlantique where it is gasified.
In a newspaper article The worldEngie recognizes that the gas purchased from American companies “may contain an unspecified amount of unconventional gas“, including shale gas. In the United States, 79% of the gas produced today is shale gas, according to the American energy authorities. While France has banned hydraulic fracturing to extract shale gas, the The United States has made the opposite choice in many states, such as North Dakota or Texas, a long-standing oil state.Moreover, in one of the largest hydrocarbon basins in Texas, the Permian basin, where the The Cheniere company is getting its supplies, the water used for fracturing is largely polluted and small earthquakes are multiplying.
Engie assures that its contract with Cheniere represents only 2% of the gas volumes it plans to buy by 2030. It amounts to the equivalent of 1.7 billion euros. This relatively limited contract was concluded discreetly and the French State, main shareholder of Engie, was not made aware, according to The world.
Be that as it may, American liquefied gas only represented 5.5% of the gas imported by France in 2020, compared to 17% from Russia, and 36% from Norway. But the United States hopes to increase its exports to Europe, thanks to events in Ukraine. Washington has never liked the construction of the NordStream gas pipeline which brings much of Russia’s gas to Europe under the Baltic Sea.