When politicians talk about a gas and oil embargo, they mainly talk about fuels, heating and power generation. It is impressive how little they know about the value chains in German industry. The fact that gas and oil are also important feedstocks for the chemical industry is virtually unnoticed. Gas and oil produce important basic chemicals, such as ethylene and propylene. Without these basic chemicals, however, there would be no plastics, paints, textile fibers, insulating materials or adhesives, nor would there be detergents, cosmetics or even medicines. But there are many other Russian raw materials on which our industry depends. All this seems to be not or only little aware of the acting politicians. A corresponding boycott without sufficient replacement supply would paralyze large parts of our industry in a very short time.
Change through trade has failed with the Ukraine war
Change through trade has been the political directive since the fall of the Iron Curtain. And that worked well for many years. Until the Ukraine war, then these political dreams burst like a soap bubble.
What still persists, however, is naiveté. Now the politicians want to become independent of foreign imports. A hopeless undertaking, because important basic materials such as gas, oil, phosphate, nickel, cobalt and much more simply do not exist in Germany. Without imports, there will also be no corresponding industry in our country.
Hesse GmbH & Co. KG, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Common
BASF to build battery plant in cooperation with Russian raw materials giant
How mendacious the whole political debate is can be seen right now in Finland. BASF is currently building a plant for battery chemicals there, together with the Russian raw materials giant Norilsk Nickel. The plant is being built on behalf of politicians and is also receiving financial support from the government. It is intended to help make the European automotive industry independent of battery imports from China. However, this is not possible without the Russians. That is why the EU has also exempted Norilsk’s major shareholder Vladimir Potanin from European sanctions. Without Russian raw materials, such as Norilsk’s palladium, there would be no semiconductor production in Europe.
Germany will never be independent of foreign raw materials
Ultimately, the chemical industry cannot do without Russian basic materials. This also applies to platinum, which is needed for catalysts. Russia is the second largest supplier after South Africa. Without Russian platinum, there are no catalytic converters, neither for small cars nor for luxury cars. So not everything can be replaced by renewable energies and green hydrogen. Our politicians should slowly realize this before they throw the whole country into chaos.
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