Nemačka - sve sto želite da znate a ne smete da pitate Filipenka

https://www.ft.com/content/07df3f2e-6991-4842-a047-41f2b6fb853d

Russian gas cuts threaten to shutter Germany industry
Many industrial companies have few options, if supplies dwindle or Moscow halts all flows


Petr Cingr is in no doubt about the fate that awaits his chemicals company if Russia cuts off all gas supplies to Germany.

“We have to stop [production] immediately, from 100 to zero,” said the chief executive of SKW Stickstoffwerke Piesteritz, the country’s largest ammonia producer and a key European supplier of fertilisers and exhaust fluids for diesel engines.

Amid rising tensions between Moscow and the west over the war in Ukraine, Russia has already drastically reduced its exports of gas to Europe’s largest economy. Berlin now fears a winter gas crisis that could paralyse industry and leave millions freezing in their homes.

All eyes are on Nord Stream 1, the pipeline linking Russia directly to Europe via the Baltic Sea. Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled gas giant, reduced NS1’s capacity by 60 per cent in June, and last Monday shut it down completely for routine maintenance. In normal circumstances, this lasts just 10 days. But the fear in Berlin is that NS1 will not come back into operation as scheduled this Thursday.

A protracted cut-off beyond this week will stymie Germany’s plans to stock up its gas in storage ahead of the heating season. The resulting shortage means “companies will either have to reduce their gas consumption or curb production”, said Jörg Rothermel of the VCI, the trade body for the German chemicals industry, which is the country’s third-largest behind automotive and machinery.

Should flows cease completely, most economists expect the eurozone’s economic powerhouse to experience a severe fall in output. No gas this winter would, according to analysts at Swiss bank UBS, trigger a “deep recession” with almost 6 per cent wiped off GDP by the end of next year. The Bundesbank has warned that knock-on effects on global supply chains would “increase the original shock effect to two-and-a-half times the size”.

As industrial companies across Germany face the real prospect of life without natural gas, some are exploring ways of replacing it with other energy sources. But for those with fuel-specific hardware, or those who use it as a raw material, there is no alternative.

Among those in the latter group is the country’s largest steelmaker, ThyssenKrupp. It said that without natural gas for processes required to run its blast furnaces, “shutdowns and technical damage to our production facilities cannot be ruled out”.

BASF, the world’s largest chemicals company, has warned that the steam crackers at its gargantuan site in the southwestern city of Ludwigshafen would be forced to idle if gas supplies dropped below about 50 per cent of its regular requirements.

“Some [companies] still have installations that can use alternative fuels, such as heating oil or coal,” said Rothermel. “But according to our estimates only 2-3 per cent of gas consumption in our industry can be replaced in this way. And that’s not enough to solve the problem we face.”

Merck is also preparing to survive without gas. It requires supplies of the fuel equivalent to the needs of a midsized city such as Darmstadt, where the chemicals company is based, to produce electricity and steam, and sodium hydroxide, without which “many chemical processes won’t work”, according to site director Matthias Bürk.

Merck has contingency plans, which include producing steam using on-site fuel oil, but these cannot be used indefinitely, Bürk said.

The government is preparing for the looming crisis. Just over three weeks ago it triggered the second stage of its national gas emergency plan, a move that brings Germany a step closer to rationing supplies. It is also bringing mothballed coal-fired power stations back on line, building new import terminals for liquefied natural gas and planning an auction system to incentivise industrial customers to cut their gas consumption.

Companies, meanwhile, have been told to make preparations for the eventuality of a cut-off. In a recent letter to an opposition MP, the economy ministry said all “operators of critical infrastructure” such as hospitals should acquire emergency power generators.

It is not just a total shut-off that is worrying companies. European benchmark natural gas prices have soared eightfold over the past 18 months, rising from about €20 a megawatt hour to above €160 a megawatt hour. The price doubled in the past month alone, leading many companies to warn that they could not continue to operate at that rate.

“We are financing the war,” said Cingr, who added that his own costs were now more than 40 times as high.

That price was already destroying demand for SKW’s fertiliser products by between 50 and 70 per cent, he added. Farmers were baulking at the increased costs, with some accessing illegal imports from Russian fertiliser producers smuggled into the EU via Serbia. The company would, he said, only be able to keep factories running for a few more weeks.

The current situation “is a clear signal to [the market] that our environment is unstable and if they can have a choice where to invest, they will definitely rather invest in America or in other regions”, he said.

The government has stepped in to help, offering €5bn in grants this week to energy-intensive companies. The bulk will go to companies making chemical products, glass, steel, metals and ceramics.

But Rothermel fears that even with such measures, the country is becoming a less attractive place to do business. “There is now a danger that we won’t be able to produce certain things in Germany any more because there just won’t be the gas, or the energy costs are so high that it’s no longer competitive,” he said.

Exclusive: Russia's Gazprom tells Europe gas halt beyond its control
Russia's Gazprom has told customers in Europe it cannot guarantee gas supplies because of 'extraordinary' circumstances, according to a letter seen by Reuters, upping the ante in an economic tit-for-tat with the West over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
Dated July 14, the letter from the Russian state gas monopoly, said it was declaring force majeure on supplies, starting from June 14.
Known as an 'act of God' clause, force majeure is standard in business contracts and spells out extreme circumstances that excuse a party from their legal obligations.
Gazprom's (GAZP.MM) had no immediate comment.
Uniper, Germany's biggest importer of Russian gas, was among the customers who said they had received a letter, and that it had formally rejected the claim as unjustified.
RWE (RWEG.DE), Germany's largest power producer and another importer of Russian gas, also said it has received a force majeure notice.
"Please understand that we cannot comment on its details or our legal opinion," the company said.
A trading source, asking not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the force majeure concerned supplies through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, a major supply route to Germany and beyond.
Flows through the pipeline are at zero as the link undergoes annual maintenance that began on July 11 and is meant to conclude on Thursday.
Europe fears Moscow could keep the pipeline mothballed in retaliation for sanctions imposed on Russia over the war in Ukraine, heightening an energy crisis that risks tipping the region in recession.
TURBINE DELAY
Already on June 14, Gazprom had cut the pipeline's capacity to 40%, citing the delay of a turbine being maintained in Canada by equipment supplier Siemens Energy (ENR1n.DE).
Canada sent the turbine for the Nord Stream gas pipeline to Germany by plane on July 17 after repair work had been completed, Kommersant newspaper reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the situation.
Provided there are no problems with logistics and customs, it will take another five to seven days for the turbine to reach Russia, the report said.
Germany's economy ministry said on Monday it could not provide details of the turbine's whereabouts.
But a spokesperson for the ministry said it was a replacement part that was meant to be used only from September, meaning its absence could not be the real reason for the fall-off in gas flows prior to the maintenance.
"This sounds like a first hint that the gas supplies via NS1 will possibly not resume after the 10-day maintenance has ended," said Hans van Cleef, senior energy economist at ABN Amro.
“Depending on what ‘extraordinary’ circumstances have in mind in order to declare the force majeure, and whether these issues are technical or more political, it could mean the next step in escalation between Russia and Europe/Germany," he added.
Austrian oil and gas group OMV (OMVV.VI), however, said on Monday it expected gas deliveries from Russia through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to resume as planned after the outage.
Russian gas supplies have been declining via major routes for some months, including via Ukraine and Belarus as well as through Nord Stream 1 under the Baltic Sea.
The European Union, which has imposed sanctions on Moscow, aims to stop using Russian fossil fuels by 2027 but wants supplies to continue for now as it develops alternative sources.
For Moscow and for Gazprom, the energy flows are a vital revenue stream when Western sanctions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which the Kremlin terms a "special military operation", have strained Russian finances.
According to the Russian Finance Ministry, the federal budget received 6.4 trillion roubles ($115.32 billion) from oil and gas sales in the first half of the year. This is compared to planned 9.5 trillion roubles for the whole 2022.
The grace period for payments on two of Gazprom's international bonds expires on July 19, and if foreign creditors are not paid by then the company will technically be in default.

Летећи Полип wrote:Sta, nema uopste vise gasa?

Пољска је одлучила да званично затражи одштету од Немачке због штете нанете у Другом светском рату, саопштио је лидер владајуће партије Закон и правда Јарослав Качински.
Јарослав Качински је саопштио да Пољска процењује да је штета коју јој је Немачка нанела у Другом светском рату око 1,32 билиона долара, јавља Ројтерс.

Који су немачки политичари и јавне организације помогли Москви да ојача гасну зависност Немачке од Русије? Истраживачки новинари Коректива представили су свој досије

The fact that German politics and diplomacy, for the first time since reunification, are starting to become less banal, less consensus-driven, and less fanatically conformist doesn’t have to be a bad thing. But these are troubled waters. For 150 years, the wealthiest, most populous, and most powerful country in Europe has struggled to pursue its own interests without also destabilizing the continent. In all of German history, in fact, there have been only two periods of relative stability: in West Germany after 1945, when Bonn balanced between Washington, Moscow, and Paris; and after 1990, when a reunified Germany pursued its interests in Central and Eastern Europe without frightening its Western allies by anchoring itself in NATO, the EU, and the euro. A political commitment to a kind of high-minded, respectable cowardice was also a part of this balancing act, as well as a cultural commitment to wearing permanent sackcloth and ashes by way of apology for two world wars and the Holocaust.

Angela Merkel’s plan was to recalibrate Germany’s delicate balance to accommodate—and benefit from—a rising China, a supposedly restored Russia, and an increasingly unstable United States. In her vision, while Chinese markets expanded, the EU single market would continue to serve as the primary destination for German exports while Brussels would function as a force-multiplier for German power—giving the helpful impression that Berlin was tightly bound by alliances, its ambitions properly subsumed in multilateral institutions. That plan is now [size=23]kaput.
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Instead, Germany is approaching what would be a worst-case scenario for the Western alliance: a more or less unaligned, frightened, and insecure behemoth floating in the middle of Europe. Far from the realization of some long-held dream, this kind of geopolitical independence would be more terrifying for Germans than for almost anyone else. Contemplating the simultaneous calamity of an inflationary spiral, an industrial collapse, a blackballed Russia, a recalcitrant China, an anti-German Europe, a lunatic United States, and a potential nearby nuclear attack, the last thing Germans want is to feel they must now create and secure their own destiny.

U RACIJAMA diljem Njemačke uhićeno je 25 osoba koje se sumnjiči da su htjele nasilno srušiti vladu. Njemački mediji navode da se radi o skupini krajnjih desničara i bivših pripadnika vojske, koji su planirali upasti u zgradu parlamenta i prigrabiti vlast.

Kao ključna osoba za njihove planove spominje se muškarac kojeg su opisivali kao princa i nazivali Heinrichom 13. Ima 71 godinu. Među uhićenima u 11 njemačkih država su i navodni kolovođe, objavili su federalni tužitelji.Među urotnicima su članovi ekstremnog pokreta Reichsbürger (građani Reicha), koji njemačka policija već dulje vrijeme prati zbog nasilnih napada i rasističkih teorija. Ta skupina ujedno odbija priznati modernu njemačku državu.

Procjenjuje se da je oko 50 muškaraca i žena u skupini koja je planirala srušiti njemačku republiku i zamijeniti je novom državom utemeljenom na Njemačkoj iz 1871. godine, odnosno carstvom poznatijim kao Drugi Reich. "Još uvijek nemamo ime za ovu skupinu", rekla je glasnogovornica njemačkog federalnog tužiteljstva.

Racije su izvedene diljem Njemačke, a dvoje ljudi je uhićeno u Austriji i Italiji, javlja njemačka agencija DPA. Uhićeni će biti ispitani tijekom dana.

Ministar pravosuđa Marco Buschmann na Twitteru je objavio da je u tijeku "velika antiteroristička operacija" te da su uhićeni "planirali oružani napad na ustavna tijela". Glavni tužitelj rekao je da je skupina planirala nasilni puč od studenog 2021. Bivši pripadnici njemačke vojske odigrali su značajnu ulogu u organizaciji i planiranju puča. Među njima su bili i nekadašnji pripadnici elitnih specijalnih postrojbi. Urotnici su, objavio je ured federalnog tužitelja, planirali osobno vladati Njemačkom. Urotnici su smatrali da svoje ciljeve mogu ostvariti samo "vojnim sredstvima i nasiljem protiv predstavnika države", što je uključivalo i ubojstva.

Javna njemačka televizija ZDF objavila je da je bivši krajnje desni zastupnik Bundestaga također bio uključen u urotu te je, prema planovima pučista, trebao biti instaliran na funkciju ministra pravosuđa. "Princ Heinrich" trebao je biti vođa Njemačke nakon puča, navodi BBC.