DUBROVNIK, Croatia, April 28 (Reuters) - The United States and U.S. companies signed deals worth billions of dollars with Balkan countries on Tuesday, boosting Washington's energy presence in the region and backing AI development.
The U.S. is seeking to deepen ties and counter the influence of Russian oil and gas in southern Europe, having signed a long-term deal last year to export liquefied natural gas to Greece.
"President Trump is opening a new era of cooperation with southern, and central and eastern Europe," U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told reporters at the Three Seas Initiative business forum in Dubrovnik, Croatia.
In Tirana, U.S. ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle signed a $6 billion, 20-year agreement between Venture Global and Aktor LNG USA to export LNG to Albania.
"This commitment strengthens energy security - and national security - across the entire region," Guilfoyle said on X.
The deal came as Wright confirmed U.S. backing for an agreement between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia to build a gas pipeline carrying U.S. natural gas from an LNG terminal on the Croatian island of Krk to Bosnia.
The project, which aims to diversify Bosnia's energy supplies and reduce its reliance on Russian gas, will be financed and led by U.S. company AAFS Infrastructure and Energy LLC. The company is run by Jesse Binnall, a former Trump lawyer, and Joseph Flynn, the brother of Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
AAFS has said it would invest about 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in the project.
Croatia and the U.S. also issued a joint statement on cooperation in civilian nuclear energy.
Separately, Croatian engineering company Rade Koncar and U.S.-based investment group Pantheon Atlas LLC signed a letter of intent to participate in an AI development and data centre project in central Croatia, estimated to be worth 50 billion euros.
The plans envisage a facility with 1 gigawatt of power capacity for AI computing and cloud services, with construction tentatively due to start in 2027 and operations by 2029, subject to permitsand grid upgrades.
(Reporting by Antonio Bronic in Dubrovnik, Ivana Sekularac in Belgrade and Daria Sito-Sucic in Sarajevo. Writing by Edward McAllister. Edited by Mark Potter)
