Wednesday, March 30, 2022

European Natural Gas Infographic

How dependent is Europe on natural gas from Russia? This may help answer the question:

 

First, a couple of details. 

Natural gas can be produced, and is, in many more places than this (note how big the "Other Europe" band at the lower left). But there are economies of scale in its production (like crude oil, it's a high volume low margin business). 

This isn't showing production or consumption, just exports and imports. Some of the countries may be satisfying most of their gas consumption with their own production (recall the lecture in the old classroom where I noted that we draw invisible lines on maps call borders, and then treat trade across them as different or more important or more worthy of our attention).

Also, natural gas can be liquefied and shipped by land and sea, but this is still fairly rare. Almost all of it goes by pipeline. And that's what this graphic shows.

Then there's a physical feature to keep in mind. Gases are unruly, in a way that liquids and solids aren't. To work, a gas pipeline has to be under pressure, and to be under pressure it has to be full all of the time, and constantly resupplied. You can turn them on and off, but there isn't much leeway in the middle. So once you build the things, you have to use them at full capacity most of the time.

So in the graphic it shows that the real dependency on Russian gas is in Germany, while Italy and Turkey also rely on it heavily. What's not shown in detail is what's in those "Other Europe" receivers. Since most of the countries shown specifically are in western Europe, I'd imagine that those are eastern European countries along the pipelines. The big ones macroeconomically are Poland ... and Ukraine.

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