Nothing works in the chemical industry without gas and oil.

And without the chemical industry, the economy would not work.

That may sound exaggerated, but in fact we are surrounded by chemistry in everyday life: plastics, lacquers, paints, upholstery, insulation material - most people are probably still aware of the chemistry in them.

The fact that the proportion of so-called petrochemical products in clothing is still 20 percent, in skin creams 40 percent and even 35 percent in aspirin should come as a surprise to many.

Bernd Freytag

Business correspondent Rhein-Neckar-Saar based in Mainz.

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In view of the debates about stopping the supply of Russian gas, industry representatives are pointing out the consequences for the branched supply chains.

Michael Vassiliadis, head of the chemical union IG BCE, warned on Monday that “hundreds of thousands” of jobs would be lost and supply disrupted in the event of an abrupt halt to gas imports.

The chemical group BASF even declared that it would have to shut down its site in Ludwigshafen if gas deliveries were to be more than halved.

There have never been such concerns at the world's largest chemical site.

The threats may sound exaggerated, but the fact is: Hardly any industry can do without chemical precursors or intermediates.

First and foremost the car manufacturers.

You are the largest buyer of chemical products of all: paints, upholstery, plastics, battery chemicals through to Adblue – nothing works without chemicals.

It is not clear exactly what the consequences of gas rationing in the chemical industry would be.

The federal government's "Gas Emergency Plan" specifically states that industrial customers may be exempted from the supply in the event of emergencies, but there are no details on this.

Leuna, Leverkusen, Hoechst

However, the complex production processes in the chemical industry mean that interrupting a production line and thus temporarily doing without a certain product is hardly possible.

To understand this, it helps to take a look at Ludwigshafen, the largest Verbund site of any single company.

Almost 40,000 people work on the area, which is more than ten square kilometers in size and stretches across three federal states.

Verbund is the key concept of production.

Everything is connected to everything else: basic chemicals, heat, steam - the starting material from one plant becomes the raw material for the next.

In the two large chemical plants, the "crackers", which cost billions, the crude oil raffinate naphtha is broken down into the essential basic chemicals ethene and propene with a lot of gas, under pressure and at high temperatures.

A large number of different products are then created on the huge site in 200 individual production facilities.

The dimensions are enormous: According to BASF, the Ludwigshafen plant alone requires 3.7 percent of Germany's gas imports.

Three of its own power plants provide electricity and steam, and 2,000 trucks drive into the plant every day.