Caspian Sea oil platform | Photo by Dogad75 via Wikimedia Commons
Part XIII: The Ukraine Crisis
It appears that Germany did not prepare for disruptions of their oil and gas supplies from Russia.
In 2014 the Consulate General of Azerbaijan in Los Angeles (CA) invited this journalist to cover a one-day seminar on the “Caspian Sea Energy Corridor,” which was held at the University of Southern California (USC). I was the sole Filipino (and, for that matter, the only Asian) writer that attended the said event.
The seminar participants learned that “the petroleum industry in Azerbaijan produced about 873,260 barrels (138,837 m3) of oil per day and 29 billion cubic meters of gas per year (as of 2013). Azerbaijan is one of the birthplaces of the oil industry. Its history is linked to the fortunes of petroleum.”
In 2020, Azerbaijan’s petroleum and other liquids production was an estimated 716,000 barrels per day (b/d), of which domestic use averaged about 92,000 b/d. Most oil production occurs offshore in the Caspian Sea and is exported to Western Europe.
During the said seminar at USC, we learned that crude oil and/or natural gas exported from countries — including Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan — move through Russia’s energy export infrastructure. At that time, Azerbaijan was quietly building up its “Caspian Sea Energy Corridor” to Turkey, distributing the natural-energy exports to other European destinations.
Melissa Eddy, a correspondent of the New York Times based in Berlin and covers German politics, social issues, and culture, can better explain the predicament of Germany in the matter of its imports of energy supplies from Russia. She wrote, Why Germany Can’t Just Pull the Plug on Russian Energy.
Ms. Eddy says in the lead paragraph: “Under increasing pressure to sever the country’s reliance on Russian energy, German officials must contend with deeply rooted economic ties.”
She adds: “A group of economists at the Leopoldina National Academy of Sciences said last month that a short-term stop of Russian gas deliveries would be ‘manageable’ if the country could increase its reliance on other energy sources.
“Perhaps Germany could have drastically cut down to zero its energy imports from Russia when the Kremlin started deploying its military forces on its borders with Ukraine — as early as January 2022 (supposedly only for military maneuver and joint training with Belarus Russian-loving sections of Eastern and Southern Ukraine).”
“Robert Habeck, Germany’s energy minister, is scrambling to make trips to Qatar and Washington (D.C.) to secure energy partnerships. Already Germany has reduced its dependence on gas from Russia by 15 percent, bringing it down to 40 percent in the first three months of the year, the energy ministry said.
“More than a third of all oil refined in Germany comes from Russia, much of it flowing directly to facilities in the country’s former Eastern states through Cold War-era pipelines.”
In Ms. Eddy’s report, “But (German) industry leaders have pushed back against imposing sanctions on Russian natural gas. Turning off the taps would cause ‘irreversible damage,’ warned Martin Brudermüller, the chief executive of BASF, the chemical producer based in southwestern Germany. He said that making the transition from Russian natural gas to other suppliers or moving to alternative energy sources would require four to five years, not weeks.” Ms. Eddy’s article is a must-read piece to understand why energy supplies are crucial in ending the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Nearly eight years have elapsed since that seminar was held. Perhaps if the German government and Corporate Germany started “to invest” in late 2014 in countries like Azerbaijan, Qatar, Canada, and the United States and other energy producers, it could have quickly diversified its sources of crude oil and natural gas. Perhaps Germany could have drastically cut down to zero its energy imports from Russia when the Kremlin started deploying its military forces on its borders with Ukraine — as early as January 2022 (supposedly only for military maneuver and joint training with Belarus Russian-loving sections of Eastern and Southern Ukraine).
By the way, I attended way back in 1971 a presentation by corporate officers of American petroleum companies in Manila, a seminar sponsored by the American Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (ACCP). It was all about crude oil and natural gas. I then represented the Philippine subsidiary of Dean Van Lines (DVL) of Long Beach (CA) as its interim manager for its Manila office and acting director for Southeast Asia. DVL was then a member of the ACCP. More on what this writer learned from the said “energy” seminars in 1971 and 2014 in this Sunday’s column.
