ENVIRONMENT MINISTER EAMON Ryan has estimated that the price of electricity and gas will remain at a “historical high” for the next two years, due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The Green Party leader has said that due to the reduced supply of Russian gas entering Europe, the price of gas will remain expensive and will continue to have a knock on effect on the price of electricity.

Speaking to reporters, Ryan said that it was currently difficult to predict the price of oil due to the number of variables, including sanctions against Russia as well as the dollar/euro exchange rate.

“I think the gas one is probably more predictable unfortunately, because it’s still to stay high. It is by any comparison historical high,” Ryan said.

He said that to help manage with the high prices, countries needed to work to jointly purchase gas.

It was a lack of common purchase in August that lead to a spike in prices, Ryan added.

He added that he had sought an emergency meeting of the International Energy Agency to discuss refilling Europe’s gas storage next year, with the meeting set to take place in February.

“We need to bring in the Norwegians, Americans, Canadians, Australians, who are all some of the big liquified natural gas (LNG) suppliers within the IEA and also to bring in countries the Japanese and Koreans and others so that we coordinate our energy use and our gas purchasing so that we don’t see what happened last July, August.

“There was this huge spike like it went crazy prices and part of the reason for that was that there wasn’t common procurement and purchasing of gas. ”

Ryan said that the biggest energy challenge that Europe faces into the next year is around how countries refill their gas storage without Russian gas.

Russian energy giant Gazprom has, on multiple occasions, reduced gas supplies to Europe, with gas supplies to Germany being entirely cut off by Russia in September.

“The biggest energy challenge facing us this year and the following spring, is how we refill our gas storage without Russian gas and that’s likely to be difficult, and it’s likely to keep prices high.

“So unfortunately for the next two years, it’s likely because unless this war ends, that shortage of Russian gas, providing historically about 40% of European needs down to about 10% at the moment, that gap is not easy to close.”

He said that the opening of a German LNG terminal last week would not provide enough gas to bridge the gap.

“So gas unfortunately is likely to remain expensive and because of that, both gas and electricity likely to remain expensive for the next two years is the best forecast.”