AKIPRESS.COM - The U.S. lawmakers mull speedier gas exports to help Ukraine and Europe, as they weighed changes to export policy to take into account a shifting geopolitical landscape, media report.

European worries about the security of energy supplies have skyrocketed since Russian forces seized control of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine this month. Moscow has in years past cut gas supplies during regional disputes. The Ukrainian crisis has led to intense scrutiny of export rules for U.S. liquefied natural gas. The regulations require the Department of Energy to grant permission for natural gas exports to all but a handful of countries, such as Canada, which have free trade agreements with the United States, according to the Reuters.

Hearings before the Senate and House energy committees on Tuesday focused on whether speeding up the Obama administration's review of two dozen pending export applications could help U.S. allies reduce their dependence on Russia for natural gas. The export projects, once approved, would take several years to construct and actually ship gas.

"The last thing (Russian President Vladimir) Putin and his cronies want is competition from the United States of America in the energy race," Senate Energy Committee Chairwoman Mary Landrieu said at a hearing on Tuesday. The hearing was the Louisiana Democrat's first as head of the Senate panel, after taking over in February from Oregon's Ron Wyden.

The session came a day after the Energy Department's sixth approval of LNG exports from a U.S. plant in the past 10 months. The DOE has kept up a steady pace of approvals since May, and it was unclear whether recent rhetoric about the Ukrainian situation was affecting its timetable. Opponents of unlimited U.S. gas exports have argued that shipping too much could cause prices to rise in the United States, hampering economic growth.