Immediately after the New Year, the mainstream European media (for some reason, mostly controlled by Anglo-Saxon beneficiaries, but oh well) began to radiate still cautious optimism: stock prices for gas at the opening of trading on the London ICE exchange, which largely determine energy prices throughout the European subcontinent , yesterday, January 5, in the early morning for the first time in more than a year fell below $ 700 per 1 thousand cubic meters, losing about 2% of its previous value.
True, after two hours the exchange, as they say, won back: the cost of the futures for February, as of 10:12 Moscow time, was $726.3 (approximately + 1.9% to the market according to yesterday's figures), but this is still not Everybody.
Toward evening, the price completely returned to the already more or less intelligible $800: although these prices are confusing, of course (we will explain why below), it was no longer very important.
In the information direction, the “victory” by liberal economic analysts has already been won, as it were.
And they tried to fix it immediately.
The German Federal Grid Agency, for example, announced just as immediately and proactively that the gas supply in the Federal Republic remains stable.
And the German underground gas storages are already filled by as much as 90.72%.
Thus, according to the agency, the energy security of the European subcontinent is guaranteed.
Moreover, the aforementioned network agency itself, we quote, “considers the current situation as less tense than at the beginning of winter.
A gas shortage is becoming increasingly unlikely ”(c).
What can be said here.
We have not formulated: the most dangerous lie is a lie to oneself.
Now let's try to explain.
Firstly (although in this particular case this is not the most interesting), it would not seem very reasonable for us to focus on the prices set on the ICE exchange in the dank City of London during the Christmas and New Year holidays.
And regular "New Year's price rallies", including in the energy market, are quite objective confirmation of this.
The reason here, in general, is simple and understandable.
And here it does not even lie in a banal thirst for profit, and not even in an explainable, and for a Russian person including, vice of unbridled New Year's drunkenness, to which British traders are no less subject to the domestic back office.
Here we will perhaps even be lenient towards British brokers and other traders.
By ourselves, nothing human is alien, and it is somehow very stupid and generally extremely naive not to understand.
In addition, let's be frank - and many authoritative Russian speakers have repeatedly said this, from the head of Gazprom Alexei Miller to President Vladimir Putin himself - the numbers on ICE initially looked artificially high.
Although pleasant for us, even if purely visual.
And, as an inevitable consequence of this, not very profitable even for Russian suppliers, not to mention European consumers.
Although this, of course, is more of a question not so much for energy markets, but for the pricing mechanisms themselves in modern economic models: here, it seems, right before our eyes, such seemingly unshakable market mechanisms as exchange trading are already beginning to crumble.
The sacred cow of all patented "marketers", one might say so.
Which is increasingly degenerating into a market of ordinary financial speculation, and not into an institution for developing a natural balance between supply and demand.
Including by establishing a fair market price.
Well, if we talk, in fact, about the European energy markets themselves in their current state, then the situation there, to put it mildly, is far from being as rosy as the local Brussels officials and other advanced and modern “European economic analysts” would like.
And although the prerequisites for a radical reduction in gas prices in Europe do exist, I would, for example, not be in a hurry to rejoice at them.
Because, in addition to the clumsy speculative deviations of traders from the London ICE exchange, who have not quite sobered up after the Christmas holidays, there are, alas, quite objective reasons for lowering energy prices in Europe.
And this is not at all an “anomalously warm winter”, which both domestic and overseas journalists like to write about.
And not the “European economy” that various Brussels officials are so fond of talking about: after all, the main energy consumption in Europe was provided, of course, not by households, which are now so zealously called for frugality.
And the energy-intensive industrial sector.
Which reduces consumption by no means for political reasons: it simply does not feel very good economically.
European metallurgy has almost “stood up” (oh, how it was not at the right time they switched to environmentally flawless, but extremely energy-intensive “electric blast furnaces”) - not only, by the way, black, but also non-ferrous.
The fate of the "flagship" for the same Germany of the German chemical industry is no less obvious from the tragic throwing of the same BASF between the USA and China.
There is nothing even to say about mechanical engineering.
But this is about objective reasons.
There are also subjective ones.
For example, gas, which is now purchased and stored in underground storage facilities, was most often bought under the guarantees of European officials for absolutely crazy money.
And now no one will sell it cheaper, of course, will not.
Whatever the "spree" financial speculators from the City of London think about themselves.
Therefore, in fact, fluctuations with a decrease in prices in the wholesale market are unlikely to somehow affect the end consumer.
As a result, in the final analysis - this is always the case - it is he who will pay for all the wholesalers' costs, including purely political costs.
Therefore, the European consumer, despite the still warm weather and tolerable market conditions, it is better to get rid of unnecessary illusions.
Because after any - even the warmest - winter, a dank and rather windy spring always comes.
Yes, and this winter, to be honest, it will be too early to see off.
Look how Moscow and the Moscow region are covered with cold weather today.
So, it will come to Europe very soon.
But whatever it is, warm or cold, this remaining part of the European winter, it’s somehow stupid not to understand that the process of deindustrialization, which was already launched in full growth, quite recently, advanced precisely in terms of industrial and technological potential of European economies, this will no longer be reflected here about nothing.
And this is also part of that new reality, that new world, to which we all will now have to somehow get used to it again.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.