Energy crisis worse than in the 70s - IEA

Today’s multipronged energy crisis is worse than that experienced in the 1970s, the International Energy Agency’s Fatih Birol says.

PHOTO: IEA executive director Fatih Birol speaking today. Sydney Energy Forum

Speaking at the Sydney Energy Forum in Australia today, Birol said: “We are in the middle of the first global energy crisis. The world has never witnessed such a major energy crisis in terms of its depth and its complexity. It is interwoven by many factors, including geopolitics.”

In 1973, an Arab contingent of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) enforced an oil embargo. This led to a fuel shortage in several Western nations, Japan, Rhodesia and South Africa, and triggered rationing and Sunday driving bans for periods in the Netherlands and Western Germany.

But unlike the 70s crisis, which was largely limited to squeezing oil supplies, today’s crisis also concerns natural gas, coal and electricity, Birol says, with pricing shooting through the roof as a result.

“Why?” he asked, “…Russia was the number oil exporter of the world, number one natural gas exporter of the world, a major player in the coal markets. And as a result we are seeing that the entire energy system is going through a crisis.”