freeeric
Europe’s economy, currencies and industries are in free fall, plunging toward “economic wasteland” status that’s less than a year away if natural gas supplies from Russia aren’t quickly restored. That’s the conclusion of numerous experts who have spoken to Natural News over the last two weeks, including war correspondent Michael Yon, Finnish economist Tuomas Malinen, global agricultural trends researcher David Dubyne, and Italian-American author Leo Zagami.
The situation is so dire that Germany chemical giant BASF — formerly part of the Nazi-run IG Farben chemical conglomerate that carried out war crimes against humanity — is now threatening to shut down operations for industrial plants that have run continuously since the 1960s. As explained by author Philip Oltermann in a UK Guardian article entitled, “How gas rationing at Germany’s BASF plant could plunge Europe into crisis,” BASF is close to shutting down its massive chemical facilities in Germany due to a lack of natural gas. But shutting down production might be permanent, since no one knows if the plants can ever resume operations after a shutdown, since the very act of shutting the system down may break it.
BASF is critical to the world’s supply chain for fertilizer, petroleum refining, medicines, plastics, consumer products, industrial materials and more. If BASF were to go down, Western Europe’s industrial economy would rapidly collapse into ruin, and the global supply chain crisis would dramatically worsen far beyond anything we saw due to covid lockdowns.
To understand all this, first consider this March, 2022 Reuters article, “BASF says it would stop output if gas supplies fell to half its needs.” That article explains:
Germany’s BASF (BASFn.DE) said on Wednesday it would have to stop production if natural gas supplies fell to less than half its needs, as the world’s largest chemicals group warned of the damage to its operations from Europe’s power crunch.
The article reveals that BASF not only uses natural gas as its energy source for chemical manufacturing, but that the hydrocarbons in natural gas are the feed stock for critical chemical production such as ammonia (NH3) which must have hydrogen (H) from hydrocarbon molecules. You can’t simply replace natural gas with electricity, since electricity contains no hydrogen. Thus, wind and solar power can never replace natural gas in industry and manufacturing, including for fertilizer production, plastics and more. As Reuters explains:
In Europe, BASF uses around 60% of the gas it buys to generate energy needed in production and the remaining 40% as a raw material to produce important basic chemicals…
Note that the above Reuters article was published well before Gazprom ceased gas flows in Nord Stream 1. Current flow is at zero, and Russia has no compelling reason to restore
