TurkStream Is in Washington and Brussels’ Crosshairs, But Math to Replace the Russian Gas Doesn’t Add Up

Barring the US’ ability to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine with itself and the Europeans, the conflict is likely to drag on until Russia inevitably finishes it on the battlefield. As part of that effort Moscow continues to decimate Ukraine’s power infrastructure. In just the past month, Russian airstrikes have knocked out more than half of Ukraine’s natural gas production, and widespread electricity outages are commonplace.

Not to worry, though. “Greece To Supply Ukraine With US Natural Gas For Winter,” Bloomberg announced on November 16.

From the very first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Greece has been helping us, working together with Europe and with other partners so that we can reach the conditions under which peace becomes possible. And we truly value your support and your commitment. Today we have an… pic.twitter.com/tN83Mjnamh

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) November 16, 2025

From Bloomberg:

Under the framework of the prospective agreement between DEPA and Naftogaz, LNG originating from the US is expected to be transported through “Route 1,” offered jointly by the gas transmission system operators of Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine, the companies said.

In other words, US LNG goes from the Gulf Coast to a floating storage regasification unit at Alexandroupoli, is regasified, and then travels through pipeline networks from Greece to Bulgaria to Romania to Moldova to Ukraine.

This is leading to quite a few celebratory takes that Europe’s master plan is all coming together:

Over the past few days, Europe’s energy landscape is coming together like puzzle pieces.

The starting point is Greece’s long-term US LNG deal with Venture Global — Greece, already the Eastern Med LNG hub, now secures stable US volumes to dominate supply to Southern Europe, the… https://t.co/ZwQWBoRCQP pic.twitter.com/7Ppteppdro

— Gulf2Med (@Ethan_0502) November 16, 2025

🇷🇺🇹🇷🇬🇷🇺🇦🇺🇸 Russia’s MFA spokesperson Maria Zakharova just issued a sharp warning to Greece (Nov 20, 2025), accusing Athens of “openly hostile acts” and promising “appropriate response measures.”

The trigger? The energy and defense deals Greece signed with Zelenskyy this week –… pic.twitter.com/rd7M4T5tAr

— Avi Avidan (@avavidan) November 21, 2025

But if something sounds too good to be true…

Plan Makes No Sense 

The entire idea that Greece using US LNG is going to keep the heat on lights on in Ukraine through the winter is ludicrous on multiple levels. The most obvious one is that Russia can still strike Ukraine’s power infrastructure—unless there’s some secret hands-off agreement for US LNG routed through Greece.

The second one, potentially even more powerful than the first, is the laws of math. Let’s quickly scan some numbers.

According to Athens, in the first half of 2025, 81% of Greece’s LNG imports originated from the US—almost double in volume compared to the same period in 2024. Sounds great, right?

The total volume of Greece’s US LNG imports over the first half of 2025? Roughly 1.5 billion cubic meters (bcm). To put that in perspective, Greece’s total consumption of gas in 2024 was about 6.6 bcm.

Now, Bloomberg and others declaring that Ukraine will be saved this winter don’t delve into the details of the deal, but according to Greek media, it’s for 13.68 GWh of capacity per day. That’s roughly 0.16 bcm total for December, January, and February, and March, and is expected to net somewhere between 2 to 6 million euros for DEPA, Greece’s state-owned gas company.

To be fair, the Bloomberg piece mentions the fact that earlier this month Athens signed a deal with the Gulf Coast LNG behemoth Venture Global. That deal is for at least 0.69 bcm per year for 20 years, but it doesn’t start until 2030, and the volume is trivial in the grander scheme of things.

I was never great at math, but something doesn’t add up here. So what’s really going on?

Helping US LNG Exporters

While the Greek LNG deals are being sold as part of an effort to save Ukraine, they’re really more about Türkiye and its Russian gas imports, as well as Washington’s overarching vision for energy flowing Westwards from Central Asia and the Caspian without the involvement of either Iran or Russia. That’s a tall task, but bit by bit Washington is inching toward that goal—even if it damages Europe in the process.

Let’s start with Türkiye. A key NATO “ally” directly  importing piped Russian gas? We know how that worked out for Germany. Moscow claims it has foiled numerous attempts to do the same to the Turkstream pipeline, which brings natural gas from Russia to Türkiye across the Black Sea and then into southeastern Europe. After the transit agreement between Russia and Ukraine expired on 1 January 2025, TurkStream became the only remaining major pipeline route for Russian gas into Europe.

Even if TurkStream doesn’t meet the same fate as NordStream, the EU plans to get completely off Russian gas by the end of next year, and it’s already working to regulate Turk Stream gas out of the EU. Brussels’ plan unveiled last month aims to end the funny business of labeling Russian gas as Turkish. The document states:

“The Regulation should therefore presume that natural gas imported into the Union (…) arriving via TurkStream (…) originates in or is exported, directly or indirectly, from the Russian Federation, thus replacing the requirement to submit proof of the country of production. In case it is claimed that natural gas arriving at these borders, interconnectors, or interconnection points is under a ‘transit’ procedure through the Russian Federation, strict controls should apply.”

We’ll see how strictly it is enforced, but if it is, it will have a major effect on the energy markets in southeastern Europe.

Bizarrely, Athens is celebrating this provision, which was proposed by the Greek energy minister, aiming to “position Greece as a pivotal player in the Euro-American energy axis and reinforcing its ambition to become a regional energy hub.”

I’m not sure how a few regasification facilities make Greece a hub, but here’s the rub. The loss of TurkStream would crush Greece. As the Greek Energy Press noted back in 2024:

LNG imports at the Revythoussa facility have remained subdued over the past few months as gas importers have shown a clear preference for more competitively priced Russian pipeline gas being rebranded as Turkish pipeline gas – to avoid sanctions imposed on Russia – and entering the Greek market via the country’s Sidirokastro gas entry point on the Greek-Bulgarian border.

In 2024, Greece got 51.6% of its total gas importsm through that Sidirokastro Entry Point. That’s a whole lot of pricey American LNG that’s going to have to be unloaded just to power Greece, let alone get Ukraine through winters and make Greece into a gas “hub” as some are proclaiming. The only way Greece can currently send American LNG north is because it is getting Russian gas through TurkStream.

But it’s not just Greece that the EU’s blocking of TurkStream will hurt. TurkStream has a capacity of 31.5 bcm of natural gas a year, roughly half of which stays in Türkiye, and the rest continues on to the Balkans and Central Europe. Serbia and Hungary are the primary European consumers. And Turkstream exports into Europe have recently been at all-time highs:

Europe is effectively doing to itself what Washington has long tried to do.

TurkStream came about after the US worked to torpedo the Russia-Bulgaria South Stream pipeline back in 2014. The project would have transported Russian gas under the Black Sea, making landfall in Bulgaria and then passing through Serbia and Hungary into Austria.

Instead Russia pivoted to Türkiye where Erdogan was less susceptible to US pressure and opened TurkStream at the beginning of 2020 despite US sanctions on companies involved in the construction of the pipeline.

More recently, Washington tried to use Bulgaria to block the flow of gas from Turkiye onto Europe, but Hungary nixed that plan by threatening to veto Bulgaria’s entry into the Schengen area.

Black Sea Strategy

American think tanks and officials have been talking about their designs for the Black Sea region for years.

Former Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs James O’Brien told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a few years ago that, “Whatever path we take leads us to the Black Sea.”

O’Brien also explained to the committee that one of the main objectives of using Ukraine in an attempt to weaken Russia is to strengthen NATO and American business interests in the Black Sea region. What exactly does that mean?

The Atlantic Council does well to sum up Washington’s position: “Türkiye can become an energy hub—but not by going all-in on Russian gas.” The thinly-veiled threat concludes with the following:

Exploring phantom opportunities of energy cooperation with Russia at the expense of real risks of getting exposed to US and EU sanctions will not transform Türkiye into an energy hub. Quite the opposite, it would spell the end of this dream.

One of the US’ top objectives (if not the top objective) is to get countries off of Turkstream and replace it with US-controlled energy.

Yet we’ve seen that LNG exports from the US to Greece don’t even fulfill all of the country’s domestic needs, so how is Washington going to make up the 15 bcm/year from TurkStream flowing into Europe?

The US would have to ramp up deliveries at an unprecedented speed. There is also the longer term concern that new gas production may become costlier because gas producers are running out of the top-tier acreage.

Athens’ deals might strengthen its strategic position in the so-called Vertical Corridor from Greece to Ukraine for now, but that evaporates if TurkStream flows into Europe go offline.

Venture Global, which signed the deal with Athens to supply at least 0.6 bcm annually could potentially ramp up future deliveries. It is currently seeking federal approval to double the export capacity of its major facility south of New Orleans, which could help it challenge the world’s top two exporters, QatarEnergy and Cheniere Energy. But again this is less about helping Ukraine or Greece than it is guaranteeing markets for all that LNG.

US  exporters are overly dependent on the European market as Qatar, Australia, and Russia enjoy better access to the growing Asian markets. Demand in a deindustrializing Europe is also shrinking, but there is still market share to be had in Europe and competitors to push out. Chief among them is Russia.

That appears to be the strategy for now.

What Does Europe Do Without TurkStream? 

Perhaps the proposed EastMed pipeline, which would deliver natural gas from deposits in the east Mediterranean to European markets, will be resurrected, but Washington has never been a fan. Let’s allow former Undersecretary of State Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland explain why:

“Frankly, we don’t have 10 years, but in 10 years from now, we want to be far, far more green and far more diverse” in energy sources, Nuland said. “So what we’re looking for within the hydrocarbon context are options that can get us more gas, more oil for this short transition period.”

That was nearly four years ago. Meanwhile, Europe’s reliance on more costly LNG imports from the US—which when processing and shipping are taken into account are more environmentally destructive than coal—continues to rise.

What about the demand that Türkiye send more non-Russian gas to Europe?

Well, that has been tried. The EU wanted more Azeri gas piped through Türkiye, but Baku is at its limits. One reason Azerbaijan isn’t going to be able to fulfill demands that it increase flows to Europe  is because Russia is no longer laundering as much gas through Azerbaijan to the EU due to Western-supported friction between Baku and Moscow.

There’s again talk about the Trans-Caspian Pipeline, which would send gas from Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan and onto Türkiye and Europe, but it’s a pipedream. There’s no way Russia and Iran are going to allow it. Türkiye had a small gas swap deal with Turkmenistan and Iran in which Iranian gas was pipelined to Türkiye in exchange for Turkmenistan sending gas to Iran, but Washington killed that because Ankara can’t be cooperating with Tehran.

Some are floating the idea of LNG ships crossing the Caspian rather than a pipeline, but the economics there aren’t great.

Who knows, though? One must remember that economic sense was long ago thrown out the window in Europe. Geopolitical considerations and the quixotic quest to inflict defeat on Russia are the driving factors at play. And the crazies in the EU are perfectly content to destroy their countries in pursuit of that goal.

Can the US make up for the volume from Turk Stream? Almost certainly not.

Will American LNG be more expensive for receiving countries? Yes.

But as Greece, Europe, the US, and the Western media champion the US deal with the newly crowned gas hub of Greece as “secure” and “reliable,” up is down, and it’s clear they can convince themselves of anything.