European Energy Patchwork Coming to an End: Abandoning Russian Energy, Hormuz Blocked, and Saudi Detour Halted – Winter Approaches as the Final Verdict of a Catastrophic Policy

Europe has not, of course, run out of energy. There is still petrol at the pumps. What it is rapidly losing is the safety margin between disruption and crisis. In other words, we have been living with disruption for years, experiencing it as an increasingly persistent condition. We have not yet entered a full-blown crisis, but we will. The uncomfortable truth is that the longer we have managed to cope with "mere disruption," the more severe the crisis will be when it finally begins.

Saudi oil shipments have been halted. Those waiting for them to resume may not realize that, as soon as they do, they could just as easily be halted again. We can "thank" Trump for that, along with a long chain of disastrous decisions on both sides of the Atlantic. But who will ultimately absorb the heaviest blow? We will, naturally. So let us examine what awaits us in what is, unfortunately, a very short period of time.

Everyone knows the story, but it bears repeating. After 2022, the continent replaced Russian pipeline gas with more expensive liquefied natural gas, Russian oil with Saudi, American, Norwegian and Kazakh supplies, and a once-stable energy system—essential to any normally functioning industrial economy—with a mixture of subsidies, strategic reserves, suppressed demand and several unusually mild winters. The system was never remotely "cured." It merely learned to limp fast enough for the condition to be described, for a while, as "adaptation."

Now both crutches are breaking at once. The Strait of Hormuz has been severely restricted for months, Qatari LNG has almost vanished from the market, European gas storage is lagging behind schedule, Russian refineries are burning under Ukrainian drone attacks, and strikes by Iranian allies—probably launched from Yemen, although Iraq has also been mentioned—have hit the crucial Saudi East–West Pipeline, also known as Petroline. This was precisely the pipeline that was supposed to allow Saudi Arabia to continue exporting oil when Hormuz was no longer safe. The Saudis thought they had prepared in advance. What they failed to consider was that their brutal war and war crimes in Yemen might one day come back to haunt them—and, indirectly, all of us.

This is not yet the moment when petrol stations close and radiators go cold. But it is the moment when Europe enters winter with almost no contingency plan that has not already been compromised by the same wars.

A pipeline can be repaired. Security cannot

One important distinction must be made. Saudi Arabia has not stopped all oil deliveries to Europe. Aramco cancelled some cargoes scheduled for late-September loading and suspended loadings at Yanbu after the East–West Pipeline was shut down.^[1] Nor has responsibility for the attack been conclusively established. Riyadh and Baghdad have linked it to drones launched from Iraq, while the Houthis have not claimed responsibility.

But that does not change the strategic problem. The East–West Pipeline runs for roughly 1,200 kilometres between Saudi oilfields in the east and Yanbu on the Red Sea. In recent months, it has carried approximately four to five million barrels per day—equivalent to four or five per cent of global supply. It provided a physical route around Hormuz: an insurance policy for the day when the Persian Gulf’s main exit became unusable.

According to traders’ estimates, inventories at Yanbu are sufficient for only five to seven days of normal exports. The US energy secretary, as we reported earlier, claims that partial flows could be restored within days, while other sources suggest that major repairs will take five to six weeks. The pipeline will probably return to service. But "repaired" no longer means "secure."

It is a fixed corridor, lined with pumping stations, valves and terminals that cannot be hidden or defended in their entirety. The Houthis have already demonstrated their ability to strike Saudi energy infrastructure, while their advance along the Red Sea and pressure on the Bab el-Mandeb have further reduced the value of the entire western export route. Even if they did not carry out this attack, they could conduct the next one with relative ease. An air-defence system needs to miss only one drone. The market merely needs to suspect that, sooner or later, one will get through.

The consequences can already be seen in the gap between screens and reality. Brent futures are trading at around $108, but some physical cargoes bound for Europe have exceeded $130 a barrel. North Sea Forties reached $136.75.^[2] Remember, the futures price indicates what a barrel may be worth in November. The physical price tells us what a refinery must pay for the oil it needs within weeks. It is the second figure that reveals the true level of strain.

Europe did not end its dependence. It relocated it

Saudi oil represents a relatively small share of Europe’s total imports. The problem is that Europe depends almost entirely on imported crude, so the disappearance of Saudi barrels sends every buyer scrambling for the same alternatives. Poland’s Orlen, which receives around 40 per cent of its crude from Aramco, is already buying from the North Sea and seeking cargoes from the United States, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Guyana.

The oil will be found, do not worry. But at what price? At the price set by the most expensive barrel required to fill the gap. If Orlen, German refineries and Asian buyers are simultaneously bidding for the same Norwegian or American cargo, then even oil that has never passed through Saudi Arabia becomes more expensive. The global market does not care where the shortage began. It simply raises the price of everything capable of replacing what has been lost. And there is no mercy in that calculation. The market does not care what kind of winter we face. It cares only about how much money can be made.

An even greater problem, as you probably know, is that not all barrels are equal. Medium and heavy Gulf grades are well suited to many European refineries and produce large volumes of diesel, jet fuel and other middle distillates. Lighter American crude is not a perfect substitute. A refinery can secure feedstock and still produce too little of precisely what the economy needs most.

Europe enters the gas winter with storage only two-thirds full

The East–West Pipeline carries oil, not gas, so its closure will not in itself empty Europe’s gas-storage facilities. But the blow to Saudi infrastructure has come in the middle of a much larger energy crisis. Qatari LNG exports fell by 96 per cent during the first six months of the war, traffic through Hormuz remained severely restricted, and US deliveries failed to replace the entire shortfall.^[4]

At the beginning of September, Europe’s storage facilities were only around 67 per cent full, compared with roughly 80 per cent a year earlier and the EU’s formal target of 90 per cent^[5]. Germany was only slightly above half. Current estimates suggest that Europe may enter the withdrawal season with storage at 70 to 75 per cent of capacity—the lowest level in around fifteen years.

Storage alone cannot heat Europe. During a normal winter, it covers approximately one-quarter to one-third of consumption. The rest must continue arriving through pipelines and aboard LNG tankers. And as storage facilities empty, the rate at which gas can be withdrawn also declines.

The baseline scenario, therefore, is not a dramatic loss of household gas supplies. Europe will probably be able to obtain the gas it needs, but it will pay for it by allowing industry to retreat still further. First, shifts will be shortened in the fertilizer, chemical, metals, glass, ceramics and paper industries. Then will come longer holiday shutdowns, "temporary" suspensions and plant closures that will quietly become permanent. Most households will retain their heating because factories will be priced out of the market first.

This is rationing by price. Nobody officially announces that energy is in short supply. The price is simply raised until enough consumers give up. When a poorer household does so, it is called "conservation." When a factory does so, it is called an "adjustment" in production. In both cases, market equilibrium is restored by depriving someone of something they needed.

If the winter is mild and windy, Europe may once again escape a major physical shortage. A strong El Niño currently makes such an outcome more likely. But if December and January bring a prolonged cold spell, weak wind-power generation and another disruption to LNG deliveries or Norwegian flows, the price crisis could become a supply crisis. That would mean emergency withdrawals from reserves, compensation for industrial consumers that voluntarily reduce demand, administratively imposed priorities and, in the most exposed countries, actual restrictions on gas consumption.

Relying on a warm winter for the third or fourth year in a row is not an energy policy. It is, you will surely agree, gambling on the weather.

First fuel, then food, then interest rates

The first blow will be visible in wholesale fuel markets. From there it will spread into freight rates, agriculture, airfares, plastics and heating. Retail prices will not react at the same speed everywhere because contracts, taxes and government intervention can delay the transmission. But a delayed cost is not an eliminated cost. It merely moves from the consumer’s bill to the state budget or an energy company’s balance sheet, from which it will later return in the form of taxes, debt or higher tariffs.

Before the first serious cold spell, Europe must therefore begin behaving as though it is managing a crisis, rather than waiting for the market to correct itself. That means joint procurement instead of member states bidding against one another—we do not want a repeat of the face-mask fiasco, this time with heating—accelerated storage filling even at painful prices, reserving diesel for agriculture, logistics and emergency services, arranging compensation in advance for industries that voluntarily reduce consumption, and providing targeted assistance to vulnerable households.

Is it time to end the war in Ukraine?

Yes. It is time for an urgent attempt to bring the war to an end—for humanitarian reasons, for security reasons and now for brutally material ones as well. Europe can no longer afford to pretend that the war on its eastern frontier and the energy war in the Gulf are taking place in separate worlds.

The first realistic step would be a verifiable, reciprocal moratorium on attacks against energy infrastructure and commercial shipping. Half of Russia’s six largest diesel-producing refineries have reduced or halted operations this autumn, while the restoration of seriously damaged facilities will take months. Ending the attacks would not immediately return Russian diesel to the market, but it would prevent further destruction of supply and reduce part of the war premium.

And the fact that Europe has imposed sanctions on Russian energy makes no difference here. A shortage of Russian resources is felt across the global market whether we import them directly from Russia or not.

Nor should anyone sell the illusion that a peace agreement would immediately begin heating Europe with Russian gas again. Ukrainian transit ended at the beginning of 2025, Yamal is no longer operating, Nord Stream was destroyed, and TurkStream remains the main active pipeline route. The EU has also legally mandated a gradual end to imports of Russian LNG and pipeline gas.^[8] Ending the war, lifting sanctions and restoring energy imports are three separate political and technical decisions.

Nor would peace in Ukraine repair the Saudi pipeline, reopen Hormuz or fill Europe’s storage facilities before December. It could, however, remove one enormous burden from a system already carrying too many. If the alternative is the continuation of a war with no clear end state, accompanied by the destruction of Europe’s industrial base and the renewed impoverishment of its households, then a serious peace initiative is no longer a sentimental aspiration. It is an urgent strategic necessity.

Many people must finally understand that a Europe which refuses to make a serious attempt at peace while both its eastern and southern energy lifelines are closing is no longer demonstrating "resolve." It is demonstrating that it still does not understand how little time it bought—and how little time it has left.

And do not expect the crisis to arrive vertically, confined to a single sector. That would still be the preferable scenario. Expect it to spread horizontally, because everything described here will strike every part of our daily lives and living standards.