Fatih Birol

The market context we are in is also helping Europe, creating a room of manoeuvre such as huge amount of LNG, liquefied natural gas, coming to markets starting from 2026 through 2030.

So there will be a lot of alternatives to Russian gas for European countries.

In fact, when we look at the history, the story with the...

Russian gas over dependences started in 1970s when Europe wanted to diversify from Middle East oil, went to another supplier to Russia.

And I very much hope that Europe now learn its lesson.

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.