Two years ago, Jaroslav NeveroviÄ, then Lithuania's energy minister, told senators at an Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing that his country and others in Europe were eager to see the United States ramp up exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), saying that U.S. LNG would bring needed diversity to Europe's energy supply.

With legislation to streamline and expedite approvals for U.S. LNG export projects pending in Congress, the U.S. ambassadors of Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Poland and Slovakia wrote to congressional leaders this week, urging action. From their letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan (letters also were sent to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi):

We are pleased that liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States is now being exported from Louisiana and that the first U.S. LNG cargoes have already reached Europe. These exports result in greater liquidity to the global natural gas market and have the potential to provide diversity of sources, suppliers and routes thus to a greater energy security in our part of Europe, a region for long dominated by an external state­ controlled gas supplier, ready to use energy as a political weapon. U.S. LNG exports will also contribute to reducing vulnerability of the CEE (Central and Eastern European) countries.

The ambassadors point out that the regulatory path remains complex in cases where licenses are sought to export LNG to non-Free Trade Agreement countries. They called legislative action to expedite LNG exports to America's European allies a timely and significant issue.â€

Indeed, it is. The Cold War left these states with a natural gas pipeline system dominated by the Soviet Union and now Russia, which in the past has used energy as a foreign policy weapon. The CEE countries have invested heavily in infrastructure to remedy the situation, building LNG terminals in Lithuania and Poland to allow LNG deliveries from any direction, including the United States.

The key, though, is development of U.S. export infrastructure. The ambassadors' letter expresses the hope that bipartisan legislation can be completed in the current sessi...