In fact, if you look like this, German Minister of Economics Peter Altmayer, whose speech was discussed so late at the end of last week, did not say anything particularly new. Well yes. Berlin really believes that - even taking into account the completion of Nord Stream 2 and the full operation of all existing pipeline capacities, including the Ukrainian gas transmission system and the Polish-Belarusian Yamal - Europe - pipeline gas is still already even in the medium term. Europe will be clearly not enough.
And no matter how hard it was to buy Russian LNG, which is trivially more profitable for the northwestern industrial cluster than LNG from other competing countries: there is the price, the “usual” chemical composition of Yamal fuel, and the advantages of “Arctic” liquefaction.
And logistics, of course. Yes, and much more, including traditional business ties in the energy sector, implying the comprehensibility and predictability of a partner. So here the Minister of Economics of the Federal Republic of Germany did not discover anything new.
All is true. So it all happened somehow in a completely natural way: and the depletion of our own production, including absolutely catastrophic, as in the Dutch structured Groningen field for Europe (the final closure has already been postponed from 2030 to 2022, there really is a problem), which recently accounted for, for a second, one sixth of all gas production in the EU. And supplies from Norway, as well as Great Britain leaving the EU and distant hot Algeria, are already officially declining decently, albeit for various reasons: somewhere brexit with subsequent disassemblies, somewhere real depletion of the shelf, where there is a sharp increase in domestic consumption, like in Algeria. The result, in fact, is one.
A very serious gap between supply and demand. And the concomitant quite natural deficit. And if we add to all this beauty the “politico-ecological” rejection of atomic and coal generation, which is intrinsic to this, it’s worth noting, intricate situation in the European energy markets, then everything becomes completely fun and sad for European energy.
And in this situation it is completely incomprehensible why the American LNG producers so, to the point of bloody snot, butting with their own European allies, trying with all their might to cut from the already scarce energy map of the European continent and yet they are not in the least competitive "Nord Stream - 2". There will be really enough places for all of them in these energy-deficient energy markets for quite objective reasons. And even Russian LNG from Yamal will remain a little longer, not allowing it to be so “active" in the markets of Southeast Asia (well, although it’s clear that all this for the time being, until they launch year-round navigation along the eastern route of the Northern Sea Route, but anyway). And why, if there is so much space around the market, do you push competitors with your shoulders? Or is it a case of desperate American Russophobia? Well, of course not.
Big business is generally quite strict thing, there is no place for sentiment and phobias from "public party politics". In addition - an obvious fact - big American business has nothing against Russian energy sources, it is impossible to argue with this. Suffice it to recall that last year Russia officially became the second largest energy supplier directly to the territory of the States themselves.
And if the United States had the task of harming the supplier as much as possible, they would start exactly with themselves. We must pay tribute - if necessary, they know how.
Moreover. In the same last year, Russian LNG from Yamal in the literal sense of the word knocked out its American competitors from some kind of market, but one of the largest economies in Europe (Spain, if it’s interesting): the experiment is all the more pure because we’re doing it with Spanish power engineers they could not influence - like the German ones, “through pipelines” - in general, in any way.
But this is not even interesting here: the American mass media, hypersensitive to this kind of thing, didn’t even pick it up, and no one from any known “embassies” tried to influence the Spaniards after that. And consequently, and in this case it is simply mathematically clear that the goal of our partners abroad with the EU, God forgive me, is not Russian energy carriers at all: the American LNG producers are perfectly, no worse than the Russian president who directly said this, they understand that there are places just about everyone in the European gas markets.
Only deliver at a relatively reasonable price. And the goal here is not at all American LNG on European gas markets, but exclusively European markets in general.
Everything is simple here. At present, there are only two natural competitors in the economy of the United States of America - these are the People’s Republic of China and, excuse me, the European Union. More precisely, not even the entire EU, but the historically developed northwestern Germanocentric industrial cluster, whose products are a direct competitor to American counterparts. And, in fairness, he is doing these of his American competitors in terms of quality / price, forgive me, like a tortoise, for God: the trade imbalance in the EU-US relations is by no means accidental, and its nature is quite similar to the imbalance in the US-China relations. And Trump quite rightly, from the point of view of interests of america first, is openly going to eliminate this “flagrant injustice”.
And by what methods - here to whom that the American god deigns to send.
Reducing the cost (due to the already famous “Trump tax reform”) of the cost of production, political pressure, unfair competition, and even a “stuffed animal or carcass”! In short, to whom “extraterritorial sanctions”, to whom “the media effect of the coronovirus” - how lucky someone is.
What, excuse me, is there a weak link in German (and European in general) industry?
And here it is, on the surface: too social, therefore, an expensive labor market, offset by high mechanization of production with very, very high energy intensity at each stage. And here the obvious competitive advantage of the North Europeans is access to virtually unlimited energy resources at sparing prices. That is, including that same Russian pipeline gas - and the word "pipeline" in this phrase is much more important.
It is all about the price and reliability of deliveries, and Russian, Norwegian or Algerian - in general, excuse me, violet.
Yes, even Martian! It simply should not be stupid there at all. And it turns out that this “competitive war" - in general, it is by and large not going with us. But only we, unfortunately, cannot say that this is not our war. Everything is simple here.
If the German cluster (we will call a spade a spade, although, of course, we are talking about cooperation between several countries), the industrial cluster will be crushed by competitors, then we will lose the reliable, stable and traditional market for us to sell domestic energy raw materials. And not just gas, by the way.
Therefore, of course, - and there is no doubt about it - we will most likely launch the same Nord Stream-2 before the end of the year: we ourselves need a successful, successful and stable buyer of our products. This is quite natural, the prosperity of European industry is quite in line with our interests, including selfish interests. Another thing is that it would be good if, for example, the Minister of Economics of the Federal Republic Peter Altmayer himself, not only spoke the right words about the real situation in the European energy markets, but also took the right and at least some real actions, or simply words are not enough. And Russia will soon get tired alone to tackle these, in general, at least our common problems.
In the end, the Power of Siberia pipeline has already been built, and the design of the Power of Siberia-2 is nearing completion. And what can not but worry Europe, the resource base at the Power of Siberia-2 (the "western route" or "Altai gas pipeline project") is shared with the "northern flows": the Yamal deposits, this was the first "Power" in Eastern Siberia.
And one can only guess where the next gas pipelines will go from there.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.