‘Are We Really Such Idiots?’ US Increases Stranglehold on EU Energy Supply with Growing Role in Caucasus

The US is on track to become the EU’s largest gas supplier of any kind this year, overtaking Norway, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

It’s not enough. It never is. Developments in the works over the next few years could see the US further increase its dominance in the EU energy department—and therefore its control over Europe.

The EU decreed last year that all bloc countries must complete the de-Russification of its energy markets by 2028 at the latest. That means countries like Slovakia, which has a long-term contract with Russia are increasingly looking to the Southeast to Turkey, the Caucasus, and Caspian region for replacement sources. 

Yet here too the US is, or is becoming, the gatekeeper as it controls a corridor through southern Armenia and takes on a larger role in Azerbaijan. So where is the gas going to come from?

Before it enters the EU, it will have to pass through Türkiye, whose gas primarily comes from Russia and Azerbaijan via pipeline with other smaller percentages coming from Iran and LNG shipments. That means that barring any unforeseen developments in Iran that see that coveted trillion open up to American vultures, it will be evermore reliance on Azerbaijan, which has signed deals to increase supply to countries like Slovakia, Hungary, and others.

At the same time, the US is becoming more heavily involved in Azeri production and delivery. From Euronews:

Speaking at the first Azerbaijan–US Economic Dialogue in Baku, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs Caleb Orr said the US sees opportunities stretching well beyond traditional hydrocarbons.

“The United States wants a greater role in the pipeline infrastructure and the other energy infrastructure that Azerbaijan is building,” he said.

Orr also flagged Washington’s backing for Azerbaijan’s growing role as a transit hub, singling out the Middle Corridor, the trade and transport route connecting Asia and Europe through the Caspian region. “We expect to help Azerbaijan grow its role as the central node of the Middle Corridor for energy transit, going to Europe and to the rest of the world,” he said.

The US is already embedded in Azerbaijan’s energy sector through ExxonMobil and Chevron.

Orr noted that ExxonMobil signed a memorandum of understanding for new exploration activities during last year’s Baku Energy Week, while US oil major Chevron signed a new study agreement at this year’s event.

“We think that Azerbaijan is a critical producer of energy for the world right now,” Orr continued. “And the United States really benefits from this relationship, and it’s one that we expect to grow significantly over the next few years.”

Turkey is also proposing a “military” pipeline to Europe to fuel NATO’s eastern flank with Azerbaijan presumably providing the supply, and a headline grabbing announcement on this front wouldn’t be surprising at the NATO summit this summer in Ankara.

It’s possible—if not likely—that such a supply route will pass through the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), a 43-kilometer corridor across southern Armenia that would connect Azerbaijan to its autonomous Nakhchivan exclave bordered by Türkiye. TRIPP looks set to proceed now after the ruling party in Armenia had a strong showing in yesterday’s election with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan declaring victory and announcing he will form a one-party government.

Ankara and Baku are already working on building an electricity corridor to Europe that will run through TRIPP. It wouldn’t be surprising to see pipelines follow the electricity corridor path, as both Turkey and Azerbaijan have long favored such plans. Work has yet to begin in Armenia, however. All development work there in the corridor is to be conducted by a US-Armenian joint venture company—with Washington’s 74-percent controlling stake— which was just established by the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation Board of Directors on Thursday.

It should be noted that much of the impetus to import more Azeri gas, and therefore the interest in TRIPP, is being driven by the EU’s phasing out of Turkstream. Last year’s decree put an expiration date on 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.”

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 customers. And Turkstream exports into Europe have recently been at all-time highs.

We’ll see how strictly it is enforced, but if it is, the EU with its de-Russification-by-end-of-2028 rule 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 Russian gas from Turkiye onto Europe, but Hungary nixed that plan by threatening to veto Bulgaria’s entry into the Schengen area.

Every piece of the puzzle is sliding into place…except, well, there are a lot of issues.

Short on Supply, In Need of Infrastructure

Azerbaijan was originally  supposed to be exporting 20 bcm to the EU by 2027, but Baku has already pushed that date back. There will be problems getting there at all.

The first is that the pipelines carrying Azeri gas to Europe are already at capacity.

Even with expansions and more compressor stations and potentially altogether new pipelines like the ones Turkey is proposing there are upstream doubts in Azerbaijan.

The problem there is that production is already struggling to keep up with growing domestic use and the EU’s demands. Information on confirmed reserves and future production are impossible to come by, but one detail that is clear: Azerbaijani exports to the EU actually declined slightly in 2025, totaling 12.8 bcm, a 1 percent drop over the previous year’s volume. That was likely due to Russia no longer laundering as much gas through Azerbaijan to the EU due to Western-supported friction between Baku and Moscow.

So maybe Azerbaijan is sitting on some highly productive Caspian fields that are finally about to come online, and maybe announcements are coming soon on big expedited pipeline projects, but one would have to believe that if it was going to happen it’d would’ve by now after four-plus years of Project Ukraine.

So that leaves Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs Caleb Orr, Turkey, and European officials looking further east across the Caspian to Turkmenistan to fill the gap. There are even more issues there, however.

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. Expanding on such arrangements would be the most logical route to get more gas to Europe, but if we’re doing logical we might as well turn Nord Stream back on or stick with TurkStream.

There is, of course, no way that the US-Israel and Zionists in Europe are going to allow any Iranian involvement. And notably, Türkiye and Turkmenistan halted gas exports via Iran following the reverberations from the decision by Washington to block Iraq from importing gas from Turkmenistan via a similar swap deal with Iran.

In light of Iran being excluded, there is again talk about the Trans-Caspian Pipeline, which would send gas from Turkmenistan across the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan and onto Türkiye and Europe. Orr and other supporters of the project try to frame it as part of the China-supported Middle Corridor.

That’s unlikely to be much of a selling point in Moscow and Tehran—or even in Beijing.

As talk of the Trans-Caspian ramps up, it’s worth remembering the reasons why the pipeline hasn’t been built, chief among them that the 2018 Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea signed between Azerbaijan, Iran, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan didn’t solve disputes over submarine cables and pipelines.

Those are governed by the 2003 Tehran Convention, which stipulates environmental standards. Moscow and Tehran repeatedly invoke the Convention to effectively block the construction of pipelines between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

Can anyone see a good reason Russia and Iran would change that position now? So any Trans-Caspian illusions involve violation of that Tehran Convention and dealing with the response from the parties whose votes were ignored.

Washington might like nothing more with a heads, it increases divisions in the Caucasus-Caspian and the chances of conflict (which would further derail any Eurasian integration efforts, and increase Europe’s reliance on US LNG), and tails, Washington gets to play gatekeeper to the transit of more resources through the Caucasus to Europe. Not a bad deal.

The more likely outcome is that the Trans-Caspian Pipeline remains a pipe dream, and the EU continues to limp along, squeezing some modest increases in supply from Azerbaijan while LNG keeps getting ferried across the Atlantic, the high prices and emissions more destructive than coal a constant reminder of that oh-so-special, unbreakable Transatlantic bond.

There is, of course, another potential outcome:

“Are we really such idiots already?”

Slovak PM Fico concerning EU’s decision to cut off direct Russian energy to EU in 2027, only to then buy this same Russian energy, from America, with an American surcharge.

Full statement
10 May 2026
Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico:… pic.twitter.com/ulamZnjdMY

— the Lemniscat (@theLemniscat) May 10, 2026

Transatlantic Stockholm Syndrome 

For now, Europe has nowhere else to turn—especially with Hormuz closed.

Libya remains a failed state. Algeria is maxed out. 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 “F**k 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 more than four years ago now that Nuland made those comments about EastMed and more than 12 since the infamous leaked call that revealed transatlantic dynamics.

Logic would dictate that at some point enough Europeans wake up to the fact that the path taken by the ruling elite leading to evermore dependency on the US and hostility to Russia and China is a rotten deal for just about all Europeans, but the rearview mirror shows the road littered with parties and leaders who run on nationalist platforms —i.e., euroscepticism and anti-NATO and no kneejerk animosity toward Russia and China— are quickly brought to heel (if their positions were ever genuine) once in power.

Still, that doesn’t change the public mood. A quick look at some polling data potentially shows some resentment bubbling up—although it can be difficult to decipher how much of it is dissatisfaction with America Inc. versus disapproval of the current administration, which likes to make a show of embarrassing Europe.

An April Politico European Pulse survey found Europeans increasingly see the US as a threat—moreso than China. And in a country like Italy, Washington is quickly catching up to Moscow. That’s pretty remarkable considering the nonstop barrage of anti-Russian propaganda that has flooded mainstream media for years now.

Politico’s survey backs up  European Council on Foreign Relations polling last year that found steep drops in US favorability ratings.

Again, that could be the Trump effect. Should a sweet-talking Democrat win in 2028 and declare the return of the liberal rules-based order, perhaps these numbers would look markedly different come that time.

That would be too bad because the bust out of Europe is likely to continue when he’s gone.

The longstanding US policy in the Black Sea and Caucasus region, for example, has been to push out Russia and control—or at least have a heavy hand in—energy flows to Europe.

American think tanks and officials have been talking about their designs for the Black Sea region for years. Former Biden Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs James O’Brien explained the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a few years ago 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 more US-controlled energy.

Mission accomplished, and the Europeans are once again doing it to themselves because Russia bad, America good.