Read the best with F+: Georgian wine and liquid gas for Germany

Robert Habeck

is in a dilemma.

Set out to end the fossil-fuel age faster than planned, the Green Economics Minister, of all people, is now flying around the world to find new sources of natural gas and oil.

Failure

, but is not only due to political short-sightedness, it also has to do with the market, as our Berlin business correspondent Christian Geinitz aptly states: When a terminal was to be built in Wilhelmshaven two years ago, the project failed due to high liquid gas prices.

Germany can still compensate for the losses.

This is also due to the mild weather and the high prices, which are forcing private and industrial customers to save.

But only in the autumn will it be decided whether the separation from Russia will succeed.

Companies have to adjust to rationing and gas allocation by the Federal Network Agency, private consumers to rising prices and cooler rooms.

The realization is difficult, but unavoidable: Europe is at war and it will not work without sacrifices and a loss of prosperity.

Carsten Knop

Editor.

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In another piece, Geinitz took a closer look at the affected

.

The situation is tricky not only in the now famous Schwedt refinery, but also in other

, more precisely in Saxony-Anhalt.

In Leuna, south of Halle, there is a large crude oil refinery belonging to the French group Total, which has so far been supplied from the same pipeline and by the same supplier as Schwedt, the Russian state-owned company Rosneft.

In the vicinity is the Infra-Leuna chemical park, which, in addition to oil products, also consumes vast quantities of Russian gas.

The chemical park alone consumes five terawatt hours of gas a year.

If the chemical park does not receive enough gas, this would – similar to the glass industry – damage the capital stock, and large plants could then be permanently damaged.

On the other hand, the entire value chain would get into trouble:

An even hungrier gas consumer than Infra-Leuna is SKW Piesteritz with 14 terawatt hours a year;

the chemical market leader BASF needs 37 terawatt hours in Ludwigshafen.

SKW produces ammonia and then urea from methane.

This is used in fertilizers, but above all for exhaust gas aftertreatment with Adblue.

Virtually all modern diesel vehicles depend on it, cars as well as trucks.

Without the fabric they stay where they are.

"My best holiday experience last year was an evening in Bucha." That writes

in a guest post for us: “There is a small lake there.

And in the lake a tiny island overgrown with tall grass that you can wade over to at a shallow point.

A hot August day.

Picnic in the small clearing with the extended family of Taras, a friend of mine from Kiev, together with children and friends from the Ukraine, from Poland, from England.

We go bathing.

As it gets dark, we cook plov, the Uzbek rice dish that binds everyone together, over a small fire.

The Georgian wine that I brought with me is flowing.

And when the moon rises and Butscha lights up, the family joins in a song, so wonderfully polyphonic and warm, so familiar and strange at the same time, so longing.

When we wade back around midnight and the bright starry sky is reflected in the water, I think:

Bucha and Mariupol shake the world.

"But here, in the Caucasus, in Georgia, where I live today, Butscha encounters fresh memories, open wounds," Münchmeyer describes her.

A piece worth reading, also with a view to the question of whether and how one can and should defend oneself against Russian aggression.

Greetings from the editorial team, thank you for your interest in our digital offers.

If you have any questions about F+, please write to me: c.knop@faz.de,

Yours, Carsten Knop

Publisher

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung