How gas rationing at Germany’s BASF plant could plunge Europe into crisis
Everything is connected at the German chemical firm BASF’s Ludwigshafen site, a 10 sq km industrial complex so sprawling that the company runs its own bus network to usher employees from its gates to their workplace.
Byproducts from making ammonia, for example, are funnelled through a 1,771-mile (2,850km) pipeline network from one end of the site to another, where they are recycled to produce fertiliser, disinfectant, diesel exhaust fluid, or carbon dioxide for fizzy drinks.
The so-called verbund (composite) principle has been key to BASF’s 157-year rise from “Baden Aniline and Soda Factory” to the world’s largest chemical manufacturer. Now, as Vladimir Putin has severely restricted energy exports to Europe, that ingenious interconnectivity could be its undoing.
The site in south-west Germany is reliant on gas as a raw material and an energy source, consuming roughly as much each year as the whole of Switzerland, and BASF played an active role in ensuring a large proportion of that gas was cheaply imported from Russia.
Should the German state be forced to ration gas for industrial use this winter, BASF says it can reduce its consumption to a degree, by throttling individual plants or swapping gas for fuel oil at some production stages. It has already lowered its on-site production of ammonia, instead shipping in the chemical from abroad.
However, because the 125 production plants at Ludwigshafen are an interconnected value chain, there a point where a drop of gas supplies would lead to a site-wide shutdown.
“Once we can receive significantly and permanently less than 50% of our maximum requirements, we would need to wind down the entire site,” says Daniela Rechenberger, a company spokesperson. “That is something that has
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