EU Gas Jumps 7% as Trump's Hormuz Silence Exposes Europe's Supply Fragility

EU Gas Jumps 7% as Trump's Hormuz Silence Exposes Europe's Supply Fragility Trump's overnight address offered no Hormuz reopening timeline, pushing gas prices sharply higher and keeping Europe's LNG supply risk unresolved. European gas prices jumped 7% in early Thursday trading after US president Donald Trump addressed the nation overnight but offered no clarity on when LNG exports through the Strait of Hormuz would resume, Montel reported.² That single omission was enough to move markets. The Strait has been effectively closed to LNG traffic since the US-Iranian conflict began, and traders had hoped Trump's speech would signal a path to reopening. Instead, Trump told the country the US would soon achieve its military objectives in the Middle East, without setting a timeline or touching the question of commercial transit.¹ The practical problem is that LNG vessels are still avoiding the Hormuz route. Analysts told Montel they fear being caught in the crossfire if the "fragile" US-Iranian ceasefire fails to hold, and obtaining shipping insurance for the route has become "trickier" in the current environment. For traders, the strait effectively remains closed until Washington provides something more concrete than a presidential speech.⁶ For European buyers, the closure compounds losses that were already building. Italy has lost around 6.5 bcm of LNG supply from Qatar as a direct result of the Iran war, according to Matteo Villa, senior researcher at the Italian think tank ISPI, leaving a gap in the country's import portfolio that will not be quick to fill.⁵ Villa estimates Italy could replace those Qatari volumes with Norwegian supply in roughly four years, a timeline that provides no near-term relief and assumes Norwegian offtake capacity is there to be contracted.⁵ Hormuz is not the only geopolitical variable European energy buyers are managing. Trump has not abandoned his push to acquire Greenland, Foreign Policy reported this week, and NATO allies remain on edge despite his earlier retreat from the most aggressive postures.⁷ The Greenland episode had already demonstrated how quickly Trump's territorial politics translate into trade risk for Europe. In January, Trump announced a 10% tariff on imports from Denmark and seven other European countries that had sent troops to Greenland, threatening to raise the levy to 25% if the island was not in American hands by June 1st. He backed away — but not before showing there is no reliable floor on the tools he is willing to use against allies.³ Greenland itself offers little prospect of resolution on American terms. A poll roughly a year ago found 85% of Greenlanders opposed annexation, and attitudes appear to have hardened since. Around 90% of the island's residents are Inuit, and concern about the treatment of Indigenous peoples under US territorial control is a live part of the debate.⁴ The catch is that both episodes, Hormuz and Greenland, point to the same fundamental difficulty for European energy procurement. Buyers negotiating long-term LNG supply agreements with US exporters are doing so with an administration that has been willing to weaponise trade access over territorial grievances entirely unrelated to energy. That is an awkward commercial context for contract signings.^7,3,5 The signal to watch is whether Trump sets any concrete timeline on the Middle East conflict and whether Hormuz reopens in practice. Until then, Thursday's 7% spike likely marks the beginning of an embedded risk premium rather than a one-off reaction.^1,2