Energy Crisis:  Coming Months Will be Challenging, Says IEA

Emmanuel Addeh 

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has reiterated that the crisis in the global energy sector may become worse in the coming months if urgent steps are not taken to mitigate it.

“The IEA has been warning for many months that the world is experiencing the first truly global energy crisis in history – and the coming months will be particularly challenging,” the organisation said.

It noted that the natural gas crisis in Europe has been building for a while, and Russia’s role in it has been clear from the beginning, explaining that countries must take responsibility.

On its efforts to ensure that the crisis did not get to the current state, the IEA stated that in September 2021 – five months before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – it pointed out that Russia was preventing a significant amount of gas from reaching Europe.

The agency  said it raised the alarm further in January, with Executive Director Fatih Birol highlighting that Russia’s large and unjustified reductions in supplies to Europe were creating “artificial tightness” in markets and driving up prices at exactly the same time as tensions were rising over Ukraine.