AEven with the West’s abandonment of an embargo against Moscow, the gas supply in Germany was no longer secure because of its unfortunate dependence on Russia. This could only be disputed by contemporaries who, after February 24, 2022, still believed that Russian supplies could always be counted on. But the world has changed: Russian gas is no longer a reliable and cheap commodity that consumers in both business and households are happy about. However, the gas only seemed cheap because, even after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, politics and business simply continued to estimate the risk premium resulting from Germany’s dependence at zero – although Germany painfully paid the costs of half a century ago during the oil crisis had experienced dependencies in energy.
It is now becoming clear how exorbitantly high this risk premium can become as soon as the gentleman in the Kremlin wants it. For technical reasons, it may not be desirable for Russia to cut off gas exports to Europe for an extended period of time unless the raw material can be sent to other parts of the world via new pipelines. But to scare Germany in the long term, it is enough to reduce deliveries to such an extent that prices rise significantly and worries arise about how the country will get through the winter. The declaration of the alarm level in the gas emergency plan by the federal government is therefore correct. There is still enough gas. But that can change.