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Europe has paid an extra €127 billion for energy since Hormuz closure
Ursula von der Leyen says the EU has spent €127 billion more on imported oil and gas since the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, without receiving any additional energy in return.
The European Union has paid an extra €127 billion, or a little over $142 billion, for imported oil and gas since the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said this week. She told the WinWin Brussels Summit that the bloc received no additional energy in exchange. “Since the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, imported fossil fuels cost Europe an additional €127 billion without a single molecule of energy in addition,” she said.
The figure has risen steadily. In April, about seven weeks into the war, the Commission put the extra cost at €24 billion, about $27 billion. By late September, EU energy commissioner Dan Jørgensen said the total had passed €100 billion, roughly $111 billion, and that the bloc had not received “one extra molecule of gas or oil.” “When we import oil and gas, we risk importing the shocks and crises that come with them,” von der Leyen said.
The current squeeze follows a longer dependence problem. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Moscow cut gas flows to the EU to a trickle, and governments scrambled to fill storage at record prices. The bloc then vowed to wean itself off Russian energy. Russia’s share of EU gas imports fell from about 45 percent before the invasion to about 13 percent in 2025. In January, EU members adopted a ban ending imports of Russian liquefied natural gas by the end of this year and pipeline gas by autumn 2027. Much of the replacement supply came as LNG shipped from the United States and the Middle East.
When the Iran war began, the EU still sourced 57 percent of its energy from imported fossil fuels. The war then shut the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway that carried about one-fifth of the world’s traded oil, and tanker traffic through the strait nearly stopped. After a cold winter, EU gas storage stood at just 28.4 percent in late March, below the five-year average. The Persian Gulf also supplied more than 40 percent of Europe’s jet fuel and diesel imports.
Within weeks, Jørgensen asked member states to consider voluntary demand-saving measures, especially in transport. The International Energy Agency’s plan to cut oil use included car-free Sundays, a rationing tactic last widely used during the 1970s oil crisis. By September, drivers in some EU countries were paying nearly 50 percent more at the pump, or more than $11 a gallon. In Italy, a weeklong truckers’ strike over diesel prices halted deliveries of milk to mozzarella makers, and Italian inflation reached 5.4 percent. EU officials expect oil and gas prices to remain above prewar levels until at least the end of 2027.
The outlook for winter is also concerning. The IEA said this week that EU gas storage is entering the heating season at its lowest level since 2013. It warned that in a cold winter with continued Hormuz disruptions, storage could fall below 10 percent by the end of March. EU gas network operators have warned of a shortfall of 12 to 15 percent of demand in a severe cold snap, and energy ministers met in late October to discuss EU-wide limits on consumption.
Russia has signaled readiness to supply Europe again. Vladimir Putin said in March that Moscow was prepared to do so, but von der Leyen called a return to Russian fuel a “strategic blunder.” Her argument is that Europe’s answer is to import less. “This year, we have again seen the devastating impact of climate change. Droughts, wildfires, floods,” she said. “But we have also seen the cost of our dependence on imported fossil fuels.”
The EU has pledged to become climate-neutral by 2050 and to cut emissions 90 percent by 2040. Von der Leyen said more than €1.2 trillion has been invested in sustainable activities across the bloc since 2021. “So let me be crystal clear: Europe will stay the course, we stick to our targets, and we back our clean industries,” she said.
Source: fortune.com
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