Brussels spent years vowing to cut the cord with Russian energy, but a perfect storm of war in the Middle East, depleted storage tanks, and rigid anti-Moscow policies has sent natural gas prices soaring to their highest level since December 2022.
On Monday, European wholesale prices briefly topped €97 ($108) per megawatt-hour, according to Trading Economics data, as the Iran conflict choked off liquefied natural gas shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. As a result, EU storage sits at just 74.62% full as of October 25 — well below the seasonal norm — and British households are staring down a projected 27% jump in energy bills come January, pushing average annual dual-fuel costs to nearly £2,200 ($2,940), according to supplier EDF. Europe is heading into a long winter with a hot mess of its own making.
How sanctions and a closed strait drained Europe’s gas tank
Europe’s troubles didn’t start this week, but they’ve been compounding since Brussels imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in 2022. In 2021, Moscow supplied roughly 45% of the EU’s gas imports; by 2025 that figure had fallen to around 12% in a dramatic shift that has left the bloc scrambling for alternatives.
But the alternatives have proven unreliable. The Iran war, which erupted in late February, has slashed LNG shipments through the Strait of Hormuz — a route that carried roughly a fifth of global LNG trade — by about 80%. Middle Eastern LNG, mostly from Qatar, made up about 8% of the EU’s LNG imports last year, and none has arrived since May, according to the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel.
Each lost shipment now has to be replaced on a global market where Asian buyers are bidding just as aggressively. The result: Europe entered winter with its thinnest gas cushion for the season since record-keeping began in 2011, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
Russian gas is leaving the front door but flooding in through the back
Here’s the irony that Brussels would rather not discuss: even as the EU cuts off Russian pipeline gas, it has spent a record €7.28 billion on Russian Arctic LNG in just the first eight months of 2026 — already more than it spent in all of 2025, according to an investigation by the NGO Urgewald. Yamal’s 156 cargoes to European ports between January and August marked a roughly 10% jump in volume year on year. France, Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands were the biggest buyers, with France alone taking 4.4 million tonnes. “Europe says it is moving away from Russian energy. These figures show the opposite,” said Alexander Kirk, senior campaign manager at Urgewald.
The EU is set to ban Russian LNG entirely in January 2027, but in the meantime, it is paying Kremlin-linked firms billions to keep the lights on. Moscow has called Europe’s push to sever energy ties “suicidal,” and Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev blames EU leaders for the soaring costs, arguing they refuse to admit their mistakes.
Heating bills heading higher as politicians point fingers
The numbers hitting kitchen tables are bleak. In the EU, a typical gas-heated home using roughly 10,000 kilowatt hours over the winter could see about €600 added to its energy costs from the wholesale surge alone, or around €715 with VAT, according to Euronews estimates. Germany, Europe’s industrial powerhouse, plans to make households and businesses pay for a national emergency gas reserve costing more than €3 billion over ten years — a stockpile meant only for crises like sabotage, not price relief. The Alternative for Germany party has called for restoring energy ties with Russia, pointing to President Donald Trump’s pragmatic deal-making with Moscow as a model.
But Brussels shows no sign of reversing course. Energy analysts at Wood Mackenzie warn that even if the Iran conflict ends by year’s end, the global LNG market won’t rebalance until autumn 2028. “Wholesale gas prices will remain high in Europe during much of this time,” said Tom Marzec-Manser, the firm’s director for Europe gas and LNG.
Europe swapped one risky dependence for another, betting its winters on a volatile global LNG market — and it is learning that you cannot sanction your way out of geography. As winter temperatures drop and storage tanks drain, the continent’s leaders may find that the only thing colder than January is the realization that their energy strategy has failed the people it was supposed to protect.
Sources for this article include:
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