US LNG imports made up almost half of Spain's gas supply in January

MADRID, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Liquefied natural gas from the United States made up 44.4% of Spain's total gas imports in January, a sharp increase from the same month last year, data showed on Tuesday.

The U.S. has become Europe's dominant supplier of LNG as the region pushed to phase out energy imports from Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine. However, tariffs threats and President Donald Trump's push to take over Greenland raised concerns among some officials about the growing reliance on U.S. energy.

In January, Spain imported the equivalent of 15,259 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of gas from the United States, a steep rise from 10,454 GWh a year earlier, according to data from Spanish gas grid operator Enagas.

That was well above 10,092 GWh imported from Algeria, traditionally Spain's largest gas supplier, which mostly pumps gas directly to Spain through pipelines.

While the U.S. topped the ranking of suppliers also in January last year, the difference with Algeria was minimal.

Natural gas imports from Russia kept declining and accounted for less than 13% of supply in January, down by more than five percentage points from a year ago.