The Italian Foreign Minister, Manilo Di Stefano, said on Tuesday that Italy has shown interest in increasing natural gas imports from Azerbaijan. 

A phone call between Di Stephano and the Azerbaijani Minister of Energy, Parviz Shahbazov resulted in the expression of such interest, with the knowledge that 8 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani gas are transported from Azerbaijan to Italy via the TAP, the Trans Adriatic Pipeline, amounting to 80% of the facility's capacity. 

"During the conversation, Di Stefano noted the need to reach a capacity of 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas as soon as possible to fully put TAP into operation," the ministry said in a statement.

Much of Europe's gas supply is provided by Russia, which today, faces sanctions as tensions over Ukraine rise with NATO. In this case, Europe rushes to diversify its gas supply and sees the Trans Adriatic Pipeline as a viable option to reel gas into Europe through Azerbaijan. 

The Italian FM contended that it is a doable process to double the pipeline's capacity into a strategic plan which aims to "diversify sources of natural gas supplies and increase European energy security," adding that the facility could also transport hydrogen in the long term. 

Shahbazov responded to this by expressing Baku's keenness in increasing the capacity of the pipeline.

The two officials, furthermore, talked about the Trans-Caspian pipeline project which connects Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan, which could be used to transport Turkmen gas to Europe in the future. 

Biden asks Qatar for gas - for Europe 

An AP analysis contends that Qatar may be able to provide Europe with liquefied natural gas - a resource that Russia has been providing to Europe through Ukraine. This may be done at the request of the Biden administration, especially after evacuation coordination and efforts in Afghanistan in September 2021. 

“Qatar sees this as an opportunity to further improve its relationship with the US after Afghanistan,’” said Yesar Al-Maleki, an energy economist at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “But it is going to be very hard to do because there isn’t excess supply.”

The supplies are well-distributed, and at full capacity: a large slice of the supply is under contract to Asia, and some Pacific US allies, namely India, Japan, and South Korea. However, even if these allies are coerced into rerouting the liquefied natural gas to Europe, it won't have much effect on the dilemma in case of an invasion.

Last week, natural gas future prices increased as the market experiences fear that a Russian invasion would disrupt gas supply moving through to Europe.

The dynamic is as such: If an escalation would happen in Ukraine, this would trigger an immediate economic embargo on Russia by Washington - and, knowing that Russia supplies 40% of European gas, sanctions would create a gas shortage around the world, sending gas prices to skyrocket and thus hurting the global economy. 

Despite all this, Russia repeatedly denied that there will be any "Russian invasion of Ukraine", and the government's spokesman Dmitry Peskov called US' anxieties that Moscow would invade Ukraine "fake hysteria."