On Russian methane and “addiction”.

Uriel Fanelli April 13, 2022 0 Comments

There are times when the bullshit detector lights up, the one that alerts me to when one thing is passed off as another. In our case, the one that warns me when the number X is passed off as the number Y.

I'll give an example, to understand. Pâté de foie gras.

Being one of the typical French dishes, France is the main producer and consumer of it worldwide. According to 2005 data, France produces 78.5% of the total global production of foie gras , with quantities exceeding 23,000 tons per year. In total, around the world, 30 thousand tons of products are sold every year. Consumption recorded in the same year in France was 19,000 tons, with around 30,000 people working in the foie gras industry, of which almost 90% reside in the Dordogne.

In second place, after France, among the major producers of foie gras is Hungary which exports almost 2 thousand tons a year. The main Hungarian foie gras market is France.

Now let's ask ourselves: how much of this filthy mixture is consumed in Italy, and where does it come from?

It comes for 3% from Hungary, and 97% from France.

Italy is almost completely dependent on France for Pâté de foie gras.

Right. It's obvious. Also because, if we talk about the TRUE and CERTIFIED Pâté de foie gras, only the French one exists. So, in theory, Italy has an ABSOLUTE dependence on the French Pâté de foie gras. And also Germany. And believe me, the rest of the world too.

Now, surely this number tells us that if we fight with the French, we will never be able to eat Pâté de foie gras as before. On average, therefore, both Italy and Germany depend on France for Pâté de foie gras more than they depend on Russian gas. Interesting: better not to piss off the French.

Good.

But now I ask you: what would be the impact if France suspended supplies of Pâté de foie gras? Um … let's just say that the strangest majority of the world would happily rinse off the zebedees. Nobody gives a shit.

What I mean?

The percentages of "dependence" on a good, and the economic impacts related to the lack are two different and independent things.

I say this because throughout the whole Russian gas talk the addiction number is being sold as if it were the impact number. So we say something like "Europe imports 40% of its gas from Russia", as if we were saying that 40% of the economy comes from there, and the impact would be catastrophic.

But when we talk about someone who estimates the impact, we start to lack details: if when we talk about addiction we get percentages (albeit cooked) that are large, (40%, 155 billion cubic meters, etc etc), when we ask around what the impact of the lack of Russian gas would be, well… we struggle a bit to find the numbers of the apocalypse.

Strange, huh?

Let's go put the numbers in their place. We start from Germany and go to Italy.

This is the German energy cocktail: energy and source.

As you can see, natural gas is only 15.3% of the total energy. And since Germany is 40% dependent on Russia, Russia supplies only 6.12% of German energy.

Is that all, the energy apocalypse? A 6% power surge?

You realize that they have ordered the complete shutdown of nuclear power without batting an eyelid (-11.9%), and now you are freaking out for -6.12%

Let's move on to Italy:

Gas occupies a bigger place, 46%, but Italy imports 38.2% of it from Russia. This means that 17,572% of the energy comes from Russia.

In neither case is it an apocalypse: in the Italian case, because Italy has regasifiers and a range of suppliers that can still grow: moreover, energy can be temporarily imported from other sources, such as French nuclear power.

Disambiguation: I'm not saying it's NOT a problem. Surely the energy ministry will have its work cut out. But we are moving towards the summer, and in the coming months there will be a way to increase imports from other sources: 6.12% German, like 17.5% Italian, are not immense quantities of energy to replace.

But especially, it is not the apocalypse that is portrayed when it comes to addictions of 40%, or hundreds of billions of cubic meters. Those big numbers are deliberately big because the press wants you to live in anguish.

Let's go back to the bomb: in the face of real impacts of 6.12% and 17.5%, the press is talking as if both nations were close to leaving the entire population in the cold and in the dark.

Sorry, what the fuck are we talking about?

This is the point: those percentages are very replaceable, if the problem will be the price.

But let's face it: neither 6.12% nor 17.5% are figures that say “apocalypse”. They talk about a momentary price increase.

These are figures that say "they want to increase your bill even more to make you pay the increases, and they are terrorizing you with cooked numbers, in order not to hit the industrialists but to download the entire price increase to users".

But the pissing thing is this: There is a place where the Russians are doing this:

they are crimes against humanity, and yes, the ones pictured below are 10-year-old girls raped and killed. Please click to enlarge. You haven't had sensitivity for decades. Who the fuck still believes it, is this the story that you are affected by sensitivity?