UK authorities are soliciting offers from US LNG exporters for long-term contracts lasting as long as 20 years, as they seek to secure supplies for domestic buyers in Britain, according to a new report from Bloomberg.

The UK solicitations come as Europe endures an energy supply crunch that is impacting everything from electricity supply to industrial processes, and which is expected to only get worse as the EU heads into a winter without the robust supplies of natural gas previous delivered by Russia.

The exact volumes being sought by Britain were not disclosed in the report, however it was reported the solicitations are for supplies of liquid natural gas indexed to the US benchmark Henry Hub gas price and delivered on an ex-ship basis, where the seller delivers the cargo to a fixed buyer and location.

Europe has been in the midst of a gas shortage since July, when Russia began to limit supplies through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. Russia curtailed the flows due to technical problems with the pipeline which were unable to be repaired, due to sanctions imposed on Russia preventing acquisition of replacement parts. Subsequently after other parts failures, Russia stopped all gas deliveries entirely through the pipeline for safety reasons.

Britain gets most of its gas supplies from Norway, via undersea gas pipelines, as well as sea-borne LNG shipments, which are augmented by some of its own domestic production.

However despite not relying on Russian shipments, the UK is not entirely insulated from the reduction in Russian gas supplies, or the wider energy shortage and skyrocketing prices it has created in Europe.

UK authorities have announced they are planning to spend £40 billion ($45 billion) to cap wholesale gas prices for six months, as consumers have been hard-hit by skyrocketing energy bills.