Patricia Cohen

And that's going to keep prices high for a while.

And then there is all these other uncertainties that are going into energy prices.

How long is that going to last?

Well, I mean, the U.S.

has already released more supplies from its petroleum reserves, and the International Energy Agency has done that as well to ease supply.

Mm-hmm.

One other thing that has happened is that President Trump has lifted the sanctions on Russia, which a lot of countries in Europe are against and is very disturbing, obviously, to President Zelensky and Ukraine.

Exactly.

So Russian oil had been selling at a discounted price, probably about $60 a barrel before.

And now it's about $90 a barrel.

And also, this sounds crazy, but the U.S.

has lifted sanctions on Iran's exports of oil, right?

Exactly.

I mean the one thing obviously that would go a long way in terms of helping this problem as well as others is the development of alternative energy sources, particularly renewable energy sources.

That's a huge investment up front.

But actually the cost, once you do that investment of solar and wind, is really much lower.

And so I think that you will see that.

There will be more development, maybe not in the United States because it's such a political issue here, but other places, development of solar, wind, and I do think nuclear power.

Those renewable sources of energy would help because it would decrease the dependence on natural gas, LNG, and oil.

So anything that you do to increase the supply of energy is going to help both in terms of diversification of supply as well as bringing down the cost.