JD Heyes – Natural News April 4, 2022
The economic fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is continuing to reverberate throughout Europe, though it is hitting some countries far worse than others.
That is especially true of Germany, which was reliant on Moscow for the lion’s share of its annual natural gas supply.
The U.S. and other Western nations have imposed sanctions on the purchase of Russian oil and gas, but not all European nations are keen to do that so quickly without being assured they can obtain supplies elsewhere. And with the Biden regime so quick to dismantle the U.S. oil and gas industry, thanks to demands by lunatic leftists within the Democrat Party, Berlin can’t really depend on a steady supply from America. And there isn’t any other viable alternative readily available.
That said, the Germans are increasingly skittish about simply dropping Russian gas, and with good reason: Without it, the country’s economy is liable to collapse completely, according to the CEO of Germany’s multinational BASF SE, which is the world’s largest producer of chemicals.
Company CEO Martin Brudermuller warned that either limiting or cutting off energy imports from Russia would likely put in doubt the viability of small and medium-sized energy firms to continue operating in the country while also spinning Germany off into the most “catastrophic” economic crisis since the end of World War II, when the country lay in ruins following an Allied invasion.
Brudermuller, who made his remarks to the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper right before German officials, in the middle of last week, provided an “early warning” to industries as well as the German population that there could potentially be shortages of natural gas, as the Kremlin appears committed to President Vladimir Putin’s demand that “unfriendly countries” settle their energy payments in rubles, the Russian currency, following Western sanctions
While he suggested that “Germany could be independent of Russia gas in four to five years,” for now, he conceded, “LNG imports cannot be increased quickly enough to replace all Russian gas flows in the short term.”
In the meantime, Brudermuller said “it’s not enough that we all turn down the heating by two degrees now,” since “Russia covers 55 percent of German natural gas consumption.” He explained forcefully that if Moscow’s gas flows disappeared overnight, “many things would collapse here” since “we would have high levels of unemployment, and many companies would go bankrupt. This would lead to irreversible damage.”
“To put it bluntly: This could bring the German economy into its worst crisis since the end of the Second World War and destroy our prosperity,” Brudermuller continued. “For many small and medium-sized companies, in particular, it could mean the end. We can’t risk that!”
Here is the question posed by the newspaper, along with the BASF CEO’s response:
And what if, for example, Putin’s demand for payment in rubles leads to an immediate stop in gas supplies?
“A delivery stop for a short time would perhaps open the eyes of many — on both sides. It would make clear the magnitude of the consequences. But if we don’t get any more Russian gas for a long time, then we really have a problem here in Germany,” he noted.
“At BASF, we would have to scale back or completely shut down production at our largest site in Ludwigshafen if the supply fell significantly and permanently below 50 percent of our maximum natural gas requirement. Minister Habeck has already activated the early warning level of the gas emergency plan,” he continued.
Russia’s Putin played his hand brilliantly, whether we want to admit that or not, in calculating what he could and couldn’t get away with in terms of dealing with Ukraine. Sanctions on his country will sting, but he seems far more prepared to weather the economic storm than those countries trying to sanction him.
Sources include:
Russia has never played its hand by reversing the sanctions.
Yet, as with all major decisions, that too looks the right decision in the long term.
Rubles!
Countries like Germany and Japan can find ways to do without oil as energy if they can get a little independence. The bully USA might want to fight them but they gradually become incapable of it. Burning oil is only a little step up from burning wood as cavemen.
All trade of the future is going to be barter-system, Russia barters its gas and oil for gold.
The Germans should have considered all these things before cancelling Nord Stream 2, not now. Is there any way of stopping their pity party?
These idiot fools that are passing as politicians have never done a day’s work worthy of what they eat or have benefitted their constituents in any positive way.
They should be made to learn that old adage to ‘never bite the hand that feeds them’.
Let us see once they run out of oil if they will invade frying-pans.
Looks like my proposition is being confirmed:
Thesis (NATO/Ukraine) Antithesis (Soviet Russia/China) Synthesis (Great Reset/Agenda 2030/Whiteocide)
Because both ‘sides’ are actually directed by the same cabal of Zionist-Communist Cryptocrats/Oligarchs successfully advancing their WEF politico-economic policies according to the Marxist dialectic…
What we are seeing now are very contrived and controlled shortages, just enough not to cause any serious harms to any established Western or Eastern business infrastructures, and cause any serious privation and backlash to recoil on the ruling cabal whom a growing number of decent people are waking up to and want them all severely punished. Nord Stream 2 is just being delayed and there will be mostly more media generated theatrics in Germany which now in any case is just one more European resource-depleted nation going along with the globalist crap to hold the rest of the resources of the world “in trust” in their insane equalization plans.
Perhaps if the Germans got tired of playing the NWO-WEF games were to see that the most probable global deal at the the end of the Ukrainian theatrics is in any case for Russia to take the two most eastern oblasts and to be given a wide land corridor from there to the Crimea. If not a deal made before the Russian occupation, then that is most likely in any case what Russia wants and is the most probable outcome. So, in pre-WWII Sudetenland type thinking why do not the Germans this time wave the Neville Chamberlain white flag and make their own deal and say to the world “peace in our time”, or do the Germans really think Putin has really gone rogue from the WEF script and is scuttling globalism to conquer the entire Ukraine and then die Welt?
Put foot in mouth. Shoot self in foot.
I think even if the NWO decides to go it alone without the new eastern economic bloc that’s asserting itself the west cannot buy from it all it needs with just a digital currency. I think Putin meant Russia will accept digital as a means to sidestep western sanctions for now but it’s not a product or a commodity so much as a means. No-one can sell their energy for digits only and no hard assets. It can only be temporary, surely.
Russia must know the leadership of the west will face economic ruin as their own currencies are turned down, and that just as the US went to war against Iraq to stop Saddam selling his oil in Euros, and had Gaddafi murdered to put an end to the African gold dinar, so it is quite likely the west will be forced, probably against its better judgement, to go to war against Russia for real and not by proxy.
Maybe war against Russia is more certain than we know?
I’m still waiting for this widespread depopulation. I’ve been waiting more than 2 years. What a load of hooey. Just die already.
To AI–there is no AI.