Rising oil and gas prices will leave many European Union citizens struggling to pay their bills this winter, though the bloc does not expect supply shortages, a senior official said Thursday.
"We do not expect the security of supply issue as such. But for the citizens that are struggling to pay the bills, that might not matter," European Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen said.
With high prices, it does not really matter how much gas or oil there is available on the market, Jorgensen told reporters after participating in a meeting of the bloc's energy ministers held in Luxembourg.
Ahead of the meeting, he said nearly 50 million Europeans cannot adequately heat their homes and warned that number could rise as the bloc heads into what he called an even worse energy crisis than the one it faced four years ago. But he warned EU countries against over-subsidizing fossil fuels.
"We're better situated at dealing with this crisis than we were in 2022 because we've reduced our gas consumption. We use 18% less gas now than we did in 2022. Also, we've diversified. We used to get 45% of our gas from Russia... now we get gas from different suppliers around the planet," Jorgensen told reporters.
"But on the other hand, this crisis is also worse because this is also oil and oil products. We've even seen situations where there was a threat to our security of supply last summer on jet fuel. We're not there now."
The EU is entering the winter heating season with gas storage sites 75% full, down from 83% a year earlier.
European wholesale gas prices briefly touched 100 euros per megawatt-hour on Wednesday for the first time since December 2022, when Europe was reeling from the loss of most Russian pipeline gas supply. Prices have climbed as the Middle East conflict has escalated and are now around three times higher than before the Iran war.
Fighting has damaged refineries across the Middle East and Russia, and disrupted oil and gas flows through key shipping routes including the Black Sea, Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz.
The European Commission began talks with refiners on Wednesday on ways to boost output, including by potentially easing some technical specifications. Western powers also agreed this month to accelerate the release of more than 400 million barrels from emergency oil stockpiles following U.S. pressure.
A dozen European countries pledged Thursday to jointly release more than 42 million barrels of oil in the coming months, Jorgensen said.
"EU member states have reaffirmed their commitment to an accelerated release of 42.6 million barrels from strategic reserves over the next months, and around half of this will be diesel," he noted.
The 12 countries, including France, Germany and Italy, said in a statement they would release the oil from strategic reserves by the end of January 2027, including 20.5 million barrels of diesel.
The other European countries involved are Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden.
The International Energy Agency – to which all 12 nations belong – made a similar call in mid-October for its members to step up the release of oil stocks ahead of winter.
U.S. President Donald Trump ramped up the pressure on Europe to release reserves after the Iran war sent energy prices skyrocketing, coming back to bite him at home with high fuel costs that have become a key issue ahead of congressional elections next week.
