Politicians and governments worldwide are gearing up for potential civil mayhem as many countries wrestle with soaring energy costs and rising inflation. 

The global economy is facing an assault from multiple sides — a war in Europe, shortages of oil, gas, and food, and high inflation, each of which has worsened the next.

Cold weather, combined with an oil and gas shortage stemming from Western sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, threatens to upend lives and businesses in Europe.

But as much worry as there is ahead of this winter, it’s really the winter of 2023 that people should be worried about, prominent oil and gas executives have warned.

“We’ve got a difficult winter ahead, and subsequent to that we’ve got a more difficult winter in the year ahead of that, because the production that is available to Europe in the first half of 2023 is considerably less than the production we had available to us in the first half of 2022,” Russell Hardy, CEO of major oil trader Vitol, told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble during a panel at the Adipec conference in Abu Dhabi.

“So the consequences of energy shortage and therefore price escalation, all of the things that have been discussed here about the cost of living, the expectation of problems ahead, clearly need to be thought about in that context,” he said.

“We are in good shape for this winter. But as we said, the issue is not this winter. It will be the next one, because we are not going to have Russian gas.” He added.

CEO Bernard Looney, speaking at the same panel, agreed. Energy prices “are approaching unaffordability,” with some people already “spending 50% of their disposable income on energy or higher,” he said.