The Energy Leverage Strategy Is Enriching Russia

In January, at Davos, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum laid out the administration's energy doctrine in a single sentence.

When we can sell energy to our friends and allies versus have them buy it from our adversaries, this is how we take the influence of people like Iran or Russia off the table. — Doug Burgum

In March, US and Israeli forces struck Iranian energy infrastructure across nine countries, including Qatar's Ras Laffan LNG facility ^[1]. The Strait of Hormuz closed. Global LNG supply dropped 15%, a loss of 120 billion cubic metres through 2030 ^[2]. The price effects were asymmetric in a way that served American leverage: European gas prices rose 84% and Asian prices 108%, while US Henry Hub prices fell 12% to a 17-month low ^[3]. The crisis the strikes created made US energy artificially cheap relative to every alternative. Trump made the exploitation explicit. He told European allies they faced a choice: buy American energy or deploy their own forces to reopen the strait.

The hard part is done. Go get your own oil! — Donald Trump

He framed the resulting price spike not as a cost of conflict but as a windfall.

The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money. — Donald Trump

The Turnberry Agreement, signed in July 2025, had already committed the EU to $750 billion in US energy purchases by 2028. But after the Hormuz closure, that commitment was no longer a commercial arrangement — it was a demand backed by escalating penalties. The EU was already sourcing 57% of its LNG from the United States, and Germany 96% ^[4]. Ambassador Puzder warned that failure to ratify would mean losing favorable energy access ^[5]. Trump raised auto tariffs from 15% to 25% on May 1, 2026, and set a July 4 deadline for EU ratification ^[6].

I agreed to give her until our Country’s 250th Birthday or, unfortunately, their Tariffs would immediately jump to much higher levels. — Donald Trump

The EU approved the deal on June 25 ^[7]. The same price spike that strengthened the American lever enriched Russia. The Strait of Hormuz closure pushed Russian crude from under $40 to $62 a barrel, allowing Moscow to bypass the Western price cap designed to starve its war effort ^[8]. Putin openly mocked European governments' energy policies as the revenue flowed in.

What is happening today on the European markets is, of course, above all the result of the mistaken policies of European governments in the energy sphere. — Vladimir Putin

The administration then undercut its own sanctions regime twice, revealing a hierarchy in which price management trumped adversary isolation. In April, Trump extended sanctions waivers allowing nations to keep buying Russian oil to stabilize markets after the Hormuz closure — a move von der Leyen opposed as the wrong moment to relax sanctions ^[9].

deliberate short term measure — Scott Bessent

Separately, the Treasury issued a license for stranded Russian oil. Bessent defended the move in narrow terms ^[10].

narrowly tailored, short-term measure — Scott Bessent

Allies are building countermeasures that will outlast the current crisis. Earlier, in February, the EU had frozen the Turnberry deal entirely after Trump imposed universal tariffs ^[11].

No one can make sense of it anymore — only open questions and growing uncertainty for the EU and other U.S. trading partners. — Bernd Lange

When the deal was revived and approved in June, the EU built in a multi-tiered safety net: a sunrise clause making EU tariff cuts conditional on US compliance, a sunset clause expiring the deal in March 2028, and an anti-coercion provision allowing the EU to reverse tariff cuts if Trump imposed new tariffs ^[12]. Macron raised using the EU Anti-Coercion Instrument against the United States for the first time ^[13].

The crazy thing is that we could find ourselves in a situation where we use the anti-coercion mechanism for the very first time against the United States. — Emmanuel Macron

European allies denied the US military access after the Iran strikes: Italy refused warplanes at a Sicilian airbase, Spain banned use of jointly operated bases, France rejected overflight rights, and Poland refused to deploy Patriot systems ^[14]. South Korea, facing the same Hormuz crisis, diversified away from American energy entirely — toward Oman, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, and Canadian crude via the Trans Mountain pipeline ^[15]. The crisis did not uniformly drive allies toward dependence; in several cases, it drove them to build exits. Von der Leyen had seen this coming. In January, she issued a warning about what happens when allies turn on each other ^[13].

A downward spiral between allies would only embolden our adversaries. — Ursula von der Leyen

The Russia oil price surge is that warning made concrete. The strategy enriched the adversary it claimed to isolate, and it is driving the allies it sought to coerce into building the legal, military, and commercial tools that will make the lever unusable.