May 28th, 2007 by John
Several European governments including the Baltic states and Poland are very nervous about the emergence of Russia as an Energy Superpower. They say Russia is using its energy as a political weapon and have repeatedly criticized the German-led plans for the trans-Baltic pipeline, which they claim will make EU members to the East more vulnerable to Russian pressure.
At present relations between EU and Russian leaders are at a low point, but some big energy companies from Europe are making their own deals with Gazprom.
The problem is that from past experience, these agreements will not be worth the paper they’re written on should a crisis happen.
As Europe becomes ever more dependent on imported energy to produce food, the reliability of energy suppliers may be a matter of life or death for many Europeans. Since there are no reliable suppliers left we should learn to use less.
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On the cover on our book, Famine in the West, the picture of a Western child begging for food from an Arab is intended to symbolise our future dependence on the Middle East for our food, in the sense that farming cannot now function without oil, and as most remaining supplies are in that region, any interruption of supplies from there would threaten our food industry.
However, we could just as easily have used a picture of President Putin or someone representing a future Russian leader, because Russia will soon almost control the Nitrogen fertiliser market and the supply of the gas feedstock used for its manufacture.
Nitrogen fertiliser has been one of the key factors allowing the massive increase in crop yields over the last 60 years that have temporarily raised the carrying capacity of the Earth way above what it otherwise would have been. Around 40 - 45% of grain yield is now due to these fertilisers, and as farmers are careful to use only the optimum amounts, any reduction in availability would cause yield losses.
Russia and a few other smaller but equally unreliable countries have become dominant because of natural gas. Gas is the feedstock for most nitrogen fertiliser production, so for gas-rich nations, turning that gas in to fertiliser is one way to diversify, but more importantly fertiliser can be shipped around the world more easily then gas.
So, Russia has become a major producer, but so have some of the ex-Soviet nations who have built production facilities near ports at the end of a Russian gas pipeline. European manufacturers using North Sea gas have found it hard to compete and have been closing down production . As gas supplies from the North Sea are declining faster then expected, we will soon see a time when either the fertiliser or the gas comes from unreliable countries.
Russia is now taking a more unfriendly stance with the West and considers energy its trump card. In any future disagreement we could be deprived of our main yield driver with disastrous consequences.
