In anticipation of the "perfect storm"

Well, the volatility on the European gas markets in the last days of the outgoing year looks, especially for an outside observer, sorry, so amazing that it’s time to start asking simple questions: what was it and who could benefit from this disgrace?

And the answers to these questions, in principle, are already slowly being seen.

But the content of these answers, I'm afraid, may not please anyone.

However, let's go in order.

Last Friday, December 24, the price of gas futures, according to the London ICE exchange, again dropped to its original values ​​below $ 1200 per 1,000 cubic meters, although on December 21 it broke through a record $ 2200. And right there, on the one hand, someone started talking about warming: in Berlin, for example, temperatures of up to + 12 ... + 15 ° C are really expected on New Year's - for winter it is quite comfortable even, to put it mildly. ...

Someone drew attention to "a whole flotilla of tankers with American LNG" hurrying to help Europe freezing in the grip of Russian "totalitarian" gas: as Bloomberg writes, people who are attracted by ultra-high prices on the London Stock Exchange and on the Dutch TTF hub are now really sent to the Old World. , reaching almost $ 2,200 per 1,000 cubic meters, as many as 15 tankers with American LNG. Moreover, according to the data of the same Bloomberg, four of them are sent to the UK, France and Spain, and one to the Netherlands, Gibraltar and Malta. And to follow both their further fate and the next potential changes in the route will, I think, be quite informative. And it's pretty funny.

Here, after all, the point is not even that LNG tankers (such cases are known and not to say that they are completely exceptional) sometimes change direction several times per voyage.

And now prices in the premium markets of Southeast Asia have indeed dropped somewhat due to the fact that China seems to have managed to overcome the current hot phase of the energy crisis (primarily due to an increase in the supply of "dirty" thermal coal to the domestic market, but let this worry exclusively to Greta Thunberg and the German Greens led by Annalena Berbock).

That, coupled with a sharp rise in prices for blue fuel in Europe, certainly for some time made the European markets, as it were, outwardly attractive again for overseas "shale predators".

Here's another problem.

The point is that the prices of gas futures on the London stock exchange ICE, which these very "shale predators" are guided by, are purely speculative, almost "paper".

Real continental (especially large) buyers don't look at them too much.

And only a relatively small part of gas supplied to European markets is actually sold at this (or at least close) speculative price.

Now let's try to explain.

Despite the fact that the real prerequisites for a gas crisis in the markets of the Old World would be difficult to deny - there is a decrease in domestic production, and an outflow of LNG to the markets of Southeast Asia, and strange maneuvers around the Nord Stream gas pipeline, which was completed not so long ago by heroic joint efforts. 2, - the current crisis itself, according to its catastrophic development scenario, is nevertheless associated with some other factors.

And too much, painfully reminiscent of the history of the not so long-standing and much more global oil crisis, when exactly the same price rally drove oil into deep minuses, then again raised it to some unthinkable heights.

And it was possible to stop it, we recall, only through the combined efforts of the previous American administration and personally Donald Trump, as well as the top leadership of Russia and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Moreover, with the help of a tough policy of the "expanded format of OPEC +", and even then not immediately.

And not without complications.

At the same time, alas, there is no analogue of OPEC + on the gas markets, unfortunately.

And the beneficiaries of that price rally in the oil markets were quite well understood and known, and they were by no means producers or consumers of oil and oil products.

Moreover, even COVID-19 had nothing to do with it.

Yes, the lack of real demand, for example, on the aviation fuel market, caused by the pandemic, undoubtedly complicated the way out of the crisis.

But it was not a damned virus that drove the world into it.

It was a classic crisis of overproduction, described in dozens of textbooks, caused by inoperative "market" mechanisms of control - both production volumes and pricing: on the New York stock exchanges, the "market that ruins everything" instead of performing these functions, stupidly and cheerfully stuffed its pockets beneficiaries of the "razrulivanie" pure speculation.

And even now, in the gas markets of Europe, we can actually observe the same thing, only, as they say, the pipe is lower and the smoke is thinner.

But the scenario itself is very similar and also starts with a wrong assessment of the market.

Only instead of overproduction we get an energy deficit, and instead of the New York stock exchanges - London.

And so everything is the same, including the attraction of the unprecedented greed of exchange players, who are unable to calculate (in the "Total" column) even one step ahead and inflate the maximum rise in prices.

In short, the same thing - only a profile view.

And with approximately the same result, of course.

Only, let us emphasize once again, without an even inert, but working institute, the conditional "gas OPEC", which the Russian side, by the way, has long proposed to create, including in order to prevent such situations on the markets.

Now, we are afraid, it is too late.

As one well-known politician of the late Soviet period said, "the process has begun."

By the way, there is a special irony in the fact that the countries that most actively advocated "advanced market mechanisms" were the first to feel the blow of the impending systemic economic crisis. And that, accordingly, did not have long-term contracts with the Russian "Gazprom", which has now turned out to be a real "safety cushion" for the same Serbia, Hungary, Germany. And now we are not even talking about those who are in complete trouble - in the same Ukraine, they are already accustomed to everything, there is nothing, perhaps, to surprise them with anything. The irony here is that for the beginning the crisis decided to blow up on a grand scale in the energy sector all the same Great Britain, whose players still continue to lobby for a complete ban on long-term gas contracts and the oil price formula in favor of exchange pricing. And on whose initiative virtually all this nonsense in the European energy sector began.

Judge for yourself.

According to the British The Times, today, December 27, the government of the United Kingdom should hold urgent negotiations with the heads of local energy companies.

Moreover, at the initiative of the companies themselves, which is especially piquant in the current situation.

This is not even a political question.

Here, in fact, everything is simple and no one is hiding anything: at least two British companies that are backbone for the energy of the island, namely EDF and Good Energy, as well as the Energy UK association, which is already quite serious (it is believed that it somehow controls about 80% of electricity generation in Great Britain in general), so to speak, asked the authorities to take appropriate measures "because of the increase in gas prices."

Of course, they accused us, the Russians, but this is no longer important and of no interest to anyone, including the British themselves.

Well, and we, accordingly, do not need anything.

Moreover, the subject of "future agreements" is clear right now, no one is hiding it, in general.

We talk about this purely ironically, because, as the newspaper The Times informs the subjects of Her Majesty, in fact, everyone has already agreed on everything among themselves. In particular, the British Minister for Business, Energy and Industry, Kwasi Quarteng, has already held individual talks with company executives. And it is already well known that industry representatives, in order to somehow dampen the radical rise in prices, will ask the British government to also radically reduce taxes (minus budget revenues) and soften environmental charges in order to avoid a "real critical situation." And the observers have almost no doubts that they will receive what they want: indeed, the "situation" itself is extremely serious. There is no time for the "free, all decisive market" and other liberal snot.

Moreover, it is already clear that even these emergency measures are unlikely to help the real sector of the British economy at the current stage of the crisis: the gaps are too serious.

Even a much more moderate rise in energy prices, inevitably going through the chain, will accelerate prices in other real sectors of the economy - in industry, in transport, and, as a result, in prices on store shelves.

No, it will not be a disaster yet, of course.

But events right now continue to develop in such a way that the current scenario begins to acquire its own internal logic.

And consequently, more and more it ceases to be controlled and controlled.

And no one knows when they will pass that very point of no return, the existence of which is already difficult to deny.

Behind which the very "ideal economic storm" is quite capable of beginning.

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.