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European leaders on Wednesday asked Barack Obama to share the US’s shale gas bonanza with Europe by facilitating gas exports to help counter the stranglehold Russia has on the continent’s energy needs.

At an EU-US summit in Brussels, Barack Obama’s first visit to the city in office, the impact of Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula loomed large, affecting transatlantic relations in various ways – from defence spending to energy policies and trade talks.

With Russia’s gas monopoly, Gazprom, supplying a quarter of Europe’s gas needs, and almost all of the gas in parts of eastern Europe, the energy issue has soared to the top of Europe’s strategic agenda as a result of the Ukrainian crisis and the fear that the Kremlin will be able to blackmail Europe if a threatened trade war erupts.

Herman Van Rompuy and José Manuel Barroso, presidents of the European council and the European commission respectively, asked Obama to come up with measures that would favour European companies obtaining licences to export US shale gas in liquid form to Europe.

Obama, while not ruling out the possibility, stressed the need for Europe to diversify its sources of energy in order to make it less vulnerable to Russian blackmail, and said Europe should open up to fracking to develop its own gas supply.

“What we are asking for is a willingness of the US side to be more pro-active on licences,” said João Vale de Almeida, the EU ambassador in Washington who took part in the summit. “What has changed in the last few weeks is the realisation in America that energy is used as a political tool by Russia.”

While European access to the US shale gas revolution is currently constrained by American licensing procedures, a successful conclusion of ongoing ambitious trade talks aimed at creating a transatlantic free trade area would also hasten European access to American gas.

EU officials said they wanted the talks finished by next year while Obama pledged that he would ensure a successful pact would not entail any dilution of consumer or environmental standards under pressure from multinational corporations.

“The situation in Ukraine proves the need to reinforce energy security in Europe and we are considering new collaborative efforts to achieve this goal. We welcome the prospect of US liquid natural gas exports in the future since additional global supplies will benefit Europe and other strategic partners,” the summit statement said. “We agree on the importance of redoubling transatlantic efforts to support European energy security to further diversify energy sources and suppliers.”

As a result of redrawing Ukraine’s borders, Russia “stands alone” in the world, Obama said, predicting that the isolation would deepen unless Moscow opted to pursue a diplomatic solution of the crisis with Kiev.

He was expected to expand on the theme on Wednesday night, branding Putin a menace to the international system built up over decades because of the Russian leader’s sudden appropriation of part of Ukraine.

In his sole big policy speech of a four-day trip to Europe, Obama, on his first presidential visit to Brussels, was expected to seek to stiffen European spines against Russia and pledge US security guarantees for east European allies on Russia’s borders who are alarmed at the Kremlin’s expansionist aims.

“The speech itself is an opportunity for him to step back and look at the current events in Ukraine in a broader context,” said a senior US official. “Standing at the heart of Europe in Brussels, the centre of the European project, he will be able to speak about the importance of European security, the importance of not just the danger to the people of Ukraine but the danger to the international system that Europe and the United States have invested so much in that is a consequence of Russia’s actions…[Europe] ultimately has been an anchor of the international system that we’ve spent decades to build, and it’s that international system that has been put at risk by Russia’s recent actions.”