{"id":440666,"date":"2026-04-17T22:56:55","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T22:56:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/440666\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T22:56:55","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T22:56:55","slug":"eu-chief-warns-of-higher-gas-prices-for-years-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/440666\/","title":{"rendered":"EU chief warns of higher gas prices \u2018for years\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Europe will face higher gas<\/a> prices \u201cfor years\u201d to come even in the best-case scenario, and possible shortages in the supply of diesel and jet fuel in the short term if the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked, the European Union<\/a>\u2019s energy commissioner has warned. <\/p>\n

The senior Brussels-based politician said the most optimistic projections were \u201cpretty bleak\u201d, due to missile strikes on key gas production facilities in the Gulf during the Iran war<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not speaking weeks or months, we\u2019re speaking years, because so much infrastructure has been damaged and ruined, especially in Qatar … So even the best-case scenario is bad,\u201d Dan Jorgensen said. <\/p>\n

In an interview with The Irish Times and seven other media outlets, the European Commission<\/a>\u2019s point man on the energy crisis<\/a> said people needed to brace themselves for things getting worse. <\/p>\n

\u201cFor some specific products like jet fuel and maybe even diesel, we might end up in a situation \u2013 if the conflict does not stop very fast \u2013 in which we also have a security of supply problem,\u201d Jorgensen said. <\/p>\n

The blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, first by Iran<\/a> and now by the United States<\/a>, has closed off a key artery through which a fifth of the world\u2019s oil<\/a> and gas is shipped. <\/p>\n

The resulting disruption to the global energy market has seen the price of fuel shoot upwards, putting the Government and other EU states under growing pressure to buffer people and businesses from the worst impacts of rising costs. <\/p>\n

US president Donald Trump<\/a> said peace negotiations between the US and Iran to extend a shaky ceasefire might resume in Islamabad in the next two days.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe worst-case scenario of course is that this prolongs for a long, long time, and prices will continue to rise, and we will have security of supply issues,\u201d Jorgensen said. <\/p>\n

The former Danish energy minister cautioned that cuts to VAT<\/a> on oil and gas risked causing a surge in demand, putting pressure on supplies. <\/p>\n

National capitals should instead lower taxes charged on electricity, as that would fit into the EU\u2019s wider efforts to shift away from fossil fuels, he said. <\/p>\n

Practical advice about limiting home heating temperatures during colder weather would help households save money, though Jorgensen said it wasn\u2019t up to him to \u201csit here in Brussels and decide whether or not people should wear an extra sweater\u201d. <\/p>\n

The commission, the EU\u2019s executive arm that proposes laws and regulations, is attempting to steer the interventions of national governments in the same broad direction. <\/p>\n

An EU plan due to be published next week is expected to give governments more cover to subsidise the most exposed sectors of their economies. <\/p>\n

Ursula von der Leyen<\/a>\u2019s executive is expected to propose EU states co-ordinate among themselves when going to the market to restock their reserves of gas for next winter. <\/p>\n

The EU was in a better position than it was in 2022, when Moscow triggered an energy crisis by choking Europe\u2019s supply of Russian oil and gas after invading Ukraine, Jorgensen said. However, the scale of the current shock to global oil and gas supplies was greater. <\/p>\n

There was no political appetite to reverse the progress made by EU states to wean themselves off their dependence on cheap fuel from Moscow. \u201cWe should never repeat the mistake of putting our economic destiny and our welfare in the hands of our enemy, [Vladimir] Putin<\/a>,\u201d Jorgensen said. <\/p>\n

A windfall tax levied on energy companies\u2019 \u201cexcessive\u201d profits sought by the German government was not on the cards at the moment, the European commissioner said. <\/p>\n

Governments needed to be \u201cextremely careful\u201d that short-term responses to the immediate pressures did not derail Europe\u2019s longer-term green transition plans, he said. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0How other countries are responding to surging oil prices – and why Spain is in a good positionOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the consumer watchdog has said that Irish motorists will remain at the mercy of volatile oil prices on global markets with events in the Middle East the key driver of higher petrol and diesel prices on forecourts. <\/p>\n

Appearing before the Oireachtas<\/a> enterprise committee, the chairman of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission<\/a> (CCPC) Brian McHugh said that they had received more than 1,000 complaints about the high price of home heating oil and motor fuel since the start of March but found no evidence of price gouging on the part of fuel retailers. <\/p>\n

He said he was satisfied the \u201creal pain that consumers are facing\u201d was not being driven by profiteering at a local level. <\/p>\n

Motoring analyst with carzone.ie Conor Faughnan said there was a real risk fuel prices at the \u20ac2 level would become the new normal. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe only thing that could substantively pull prices down again would be a change to the geopolitical situation and if there isn\u2019t a very swift resolution to the geopolitical situation then we could be looking at the new normal,\u201d he told The Irish Times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Europe will face higher gas prices \u201cfor years\u201d to come even in the best-case scenario, and possible shortages…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[79,7771,356,179,18,35808,15912,4893,5766,2219,19,18929,17,45036,47615,9951,4766,384],"class_list":{"0":"post-440666","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-competition-and-consumer-protection-commission-ccpc","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-energy-costs","14":"tag-energy-crisis","15":"tag-eu","16":"tag-european-commission","17":"tag-european-union","18":"tag-ie","19":"tag-iran","20":"tag-ireland","21":"tag-israel-iran-conflict","22":"tag-lng","23":"tag-oil","24":"tag-oireachtas","25":"tag-united-states"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116422525081910997","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}