Europe’s 2023/2024 Winter Will Be Even Harder: IEA Chief

The European 2023/2024 winter energy supply situation will be even harder, because of the lack of Russian gas, a potential rebound of the Chinese economy and insufficient new LNG capacity additions in 2023, Fatih Birol, IEA chief executive director, said on Bloomberg TV.

• “This winter…Europe can go through this winter with some economic and social bruises because we have put a lot of gas in the storage.”
• He said next winter will be harder as gas from Russia helped to refill storage in 2022 but will not be case next year. Also a rebound in the Chinese economy may increase their LNG demand and next year the amount of new LNG capacity coming to the market is 20bcm, which is the lowest in the last 15 years.
• “In the next few years we will still need gas in order to substitute the Russian gas, because we are not adding, we are substituting Russian gas. “
• “On 24 February Russia was selling 75% of this gas to Europe and Europe lost it, therefore there is a need for Europe to substitute this gas in the short term, and LNG is one of the answers to that.”