Status: 03/08/2022 08:56 a.m
The Federal Association of German Industry sees massive consequences for the German economy in the event of a lack of Russian deliveries of oil, gas and coal. The competitiveness of the industry is at risk.
Forgoing imports of Russian gas and oil in the short term would cause massive damage to domestic industrial companies, according to the Federation of German Industries (BDI). Heat generation, mobility, but also the power supply for the companies cannot be secured in any other way at the moment.
Energy imports cannot be replaced quickly
“Debates about a European energy embargo against Russia are playing with fire,” BDI President Siegfried Russwurm told the dpa news agency. An embargo threatens to punish Germany and the EU more severely than the aggressor. He describes the consequences for industrial value creation, but also for supply chains and security of supply as “dramatic”: “It is impossible to replace these energy imports overnight. About a third of the oil used in Germany and more than half of the natural gas are currently from Russia.”
Russia supplies more than 50 percent of the natural gas consumed in Germany. But the share of Russian hard coal in power generation in Germany is around half. In individual power plants in Germany, up to 75 percent Russian hard coal is currently being burned.
Federal government excludes energy supplies
The federal government rejects such an embargo, as demanded by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy because of the Russian attack on his country. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said yesterday that Europe had deliberately excluded energy supplies from the sanctions against Russia because of the Ukraine war. “There is currently no other way of securing Europe’s supply of energy for heating, for mobility, for power supply and for industry.”
For its part, Russia had openly threatened to stop gas deliveries through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline in the Baltic Sea yesterday. “We have every right to make a ‘mirror-fair’ decision and to impose an embargo on the transit of gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline,” said Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak in a speech broadcast on state television on Monday evening. He commented on the stopped Nord Stream 2 line, which Russia is trying to put into operation.
Price caprioles on the commodity exchanges
Due to the embargo discussion, energy prices have continued to rise significantly. The natural gas future rose to a record high of EUR 345 per megawatt hour yesterday. The price of Brent crude oil from the North Sea jumped by almost 20 percent at times and reached a 13-year high at $139.13 per barrel (159 liters). “If all Russian energy exports were sanctioned, a Brent price of more than $200 would not surprise me,” said OCBC economist Howie Lee.