Fatih Birol

that doesn't repeat the same mistake and create diversification for its energy imports.

For me, the number one golden rule of energy security is diversify as much as possible.

There are a lot of countries providing gas to the markets.

Markets will turn from years and years being a market of sellers to the markets of buyers, so it will make the Europeans stronger.

And of course, the US is a very important ally.

Europe will continue to import US LNG, but there will also be other opportunities for Europe.

This is a key question for Russians.

And first of all, they will lose a lot of money, lots of revenues.

And it is not easy for gas, unlike oil, to go from one destination to another because a big chunk of the Russian gas came to Europe through pipelines, which were built years and years.

And now Russia is trying to increase exports to China

which is in fact a difficult undertaking for several reasons.

I think when we see the Russian energy imports, bulk of it is, as we discussed, is natural gas.

There is oil and there is also uranium supply, nuclear supplies coming from Russia.

I think to ban the oil from Russia is also very timely from a political perspective.

But in addition to that, there is a huge amount of oil in the markets.

There's a surplus of oil, oil production.

So it wouldn't have a major impact on the oil prices if it is done in a gradual and in a careful way.

So it wouldn't lead to price spikes, as many of us might be scared of.

So I think it will be timely if Europe goes that way.

It will, in turn, help Europe to reduce Russian energy export revenues.