Welcome to the Eurointelligence podcast. I'm Wolfgang Munchau and with me are Zuzana Muncheng and Jack Smith.

Today we want to talk about energy, how to obtain alternative supplies and how to pay for it.

The big scandal story, or the big story this week was that Russia, Vladimir Putin, is demanding we pay for his gas and oil in rubles.

That shocked a lot of people and surprised a lot of people.

Fair to say that nobody really had that on the radar screen.

We took some time to think about it, what it would involve and why ultimately this isn't possible.

But behind all this is the much bigger question that we all have to

address is, you know, the gas supplies will at one point end, whether this is happening in the

medium term or whether we'll actually sanction Russian gas. We haven't done this this week. There's

a European Council going on as we speak. The Germans and the Italians are resisting.

Olaf Schultz has said there will be no compromise on this question.

I would expect the same two.

However, I would assume that at some point the pressure on them will grow.

Or Putin might pull the trigger.

There are different ways for these gas

flows to stop. They'll certainly stop in the medium term, so we will ultimately have to rethink

our entire energy policy. Now, Jack, you've written about alternative sources of gas supplies,

LNG and, you know, American purchases, Qatari purchases. You know, where do we

stand and what, what are the, you know, what can we expect? So, I mean, the first thing, of course,

is that national governments and at the European level, they spent an extreme amount of time

talking to these kind of representatives, so to the Emir of Qatar, to the European level, they spent an extreme amount of time talking to these

kind of representatives, so to the Emir of Qatar, to the US president, to various gas importing

...