Informal and Formal Energy Alliances: The Hybrid US-Qatar Joint Offensive Against the EU CSDDD

In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the instability in the Middle East, and the persistent Sino-American frictions, old and new geopolitical tensions are profoundly influencing the global energy order. The EU emerges as one of the few great energy powers to still advance ambitions of green energy policies and decarbonisation aligned with its identity as a normative power. Crucially, these deep tensions are playing an even greater role in reshaping international alignments according to interests located at the intersection between energy security and energy transition strategies. Against this background, the paper delves into the theoretical and empirical research of international energy alliances. In particular, the research investigates: How do energy alliances form, and what are the differentiating factors between formal and informal energy allies? Are material aspects—such as sharing energy production and export, the perception of a common threat to energy sovereignty, and win-win cooperation—sufficient motives to create formal energy alliances? Or, instead, are constructed conditions such as perceived common threats to identity (norms, ideas, beliefs), a shared degree of institutionalisation, even in the absence of a formal membership, and the common identification into a community—which foster trust-building among partners—necessary conditions to forge hybrid and more formalised energy alliances? Drawing from concepts such as national interest and perception, respectively from the neoclassical realism and constructivist schools in IR, the article develops a framework to understand the process formation of formal and informal energy alliances by investigating the rising gas and LNG alliance between the United States and Qatar. Empirically, the research shows how from a more informal and weakly-institutionalised energy alliance, the same has increasingly grown closer to resemble a hybrid and more formalised energy alliance, with serious implications for the target of the alliance, the EU, and the future of its energy governance and climate ambitions. In particular, the article focuses on the recent joint attempt by Washington and Doha to challenge the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) by leveraging LNG exports and energy security concerns among European Union importers, along with the fragmented political landscape within the same EU regarding climate and energy policies. The same framework could serve as a departing point for studies of how hybrid forms of energy alliances could contribute to disrupt energy governance and climate policies of targeted countries or Great Powers with heavily institutionalised models of energy governance, with implications on the same global energy order originating in these multiple geopolitical tensions.