/ world today news/ German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said that the G-7 countries do not agree with Russia’s demand to pay for energy resources in rubles.
At the same time, a collective Europe, faithful to its allied duty, is just now learning the tangible consequences of the anti-Russian sanctions it has already imposed. For example, in Spain there are mass strikes by farmers who refuse to start the sowing campaign until Brussels lowers the selling prices of fuels. The situation is so critical that on March 25 the leaders of the European countries asked the European Commission and the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators to take all possible measures to normalize electricity prices, which had been stubbornly rising thanks to the pandemic before, and last month they jumped sharply to the sky, setting new historical records.
It is amusing to watch European officials suddenly discover that the laws of globalization work both ways, and that Russia is not a weak periphery at all, but a key supplier of resources, without which the usual level of everyday European comfort becomes painfully expensive. At the same time, anti-Russian sanctions do not only lead to growing figures in household bills.
Thanks to numerous publications, the conviction has been firmly established in the mind of the mass reader that the rejection of Russian gas as a time machine will return the Old World to the not-so-distant past, when the lit lamp was a miracle, and the warm faucet in every apartment was dreamed of by almost all writers fantasists.
Behind the scenes of a wide understanding is modestly hidden the fact that gas, as the old joke said, is not only valuable light and heat, but also a huge elemental base, without which the usual life of modern man is simply impossible.
Our conversation today may seem boring to some and will remind you of school chemistry lessons, but we assure you that by the end you will understand much more clearly the anecdotal of the current situation, when the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen swears not only to save the European industry and economy, but also to completely abandon the import of Russian energy resources by 2027.
Let’s start with the educational program.
Natural gas is divided into oily and dry according to its properties. Methane is called oily, it contains various impurities (heavy hydrocarbons), the content of which makes their extraction and subsequent processing financially viable. Dry gas, you guessed it, is methane from which these heaviest fractions have been removed. It is a dry gas that is usually pumped through main pipelines to customers, although oily gas can also be supplied by agreement of the parties. This usually happens when the supplier does not have its own gas processing facilities. Such contracts deprive the exporter of the lion’s share of potential profits because he is selling downstream raw materials rather than high-value-added secondary products. This is why the industrialized countries are so fond of making agreements and pumping resources out of the more backward and poorer countries, exchanging their own surplus profits in fact for beads.
Let’s make a reservation right away that everything is fine with gas processing in Russia. And soon it will be even better. Near the city of Svobodny, the construction of a giant enterprise, the Amur gas processing plant, is being completed, and in the near future the construction of a more modest plant in Ust-Luga will begin. That is, practically pure methane will come from Russia, and all useful impurities will bring money to the state budget. At the same time, we repeat once again, oil gas can also be supplied to foreign buyers by mutual agreement.
The latter is so interesting for the simple reason that in it, like in a fairy chest, real treasures await, which delight every chemist. Modern industry has learned to extract ethane, propane, butane, helium and the pentane-hexane fraction from natural gas.
Let us briefly list the areas of their application.
Ethane is an intermediate product of the more familiar ethylene. It is the world’s most abundant industrially produced organic compound. Each year, chemical plants produce over 100 million tons of ethylene, and this market is growing steadily at an average of five percent per year. Another world record holder in terms of production tonnage – polyethylene – is made on its basis. This, of course, is not about the packaging in supermarkets at all. Polyethylene is used to produce a wide range of plastics (food, packaging, agricultural, heat shrinkable), water and gas pipes, chemical fibers, electrical insulation materials, prosthetic internal organs, plastics for the automotive and electronics industries, and many others.
Propane is much better known because of its use as a fuel for gas stoves and water heaters. It was he who became widespread as a resource for heating large industrial premises such as workshops, farms or greenhouses. In addition to pure heat generation, propane is used for cutting and welding metals.
Butane is also in demand as a fuel stored and transported in cylinders, but there is more to it. It is used as a refrigerant in freezers and is increasingly displacing freon from this niche, which is considered toxic and harmful to the environment and atmosphere.
Propane and butane are widely used as fuel for cars.
The pentane-hexane fraction is perhaps the least known useful component of natural gas, but oil and gas industry professionals are very familiar with it. The fraction is widely used as a raw material in oil and gas chemical enterprises, without it hydrocarbon separation processes are impossible. In such waste-free production, the fraction itself is first separated from the natural gas, and later used to extract other constituents.
The last thing we will get from our treasure chest is helium.
It is not found in nature in its pure form, but due to the extreme demand, the production of solar gas is constantly growing. Suffice it to say that the global helium market is 160 million cubic meters and growing. Like its counterparts listed above, the noble gas is not so simple and is needed not only for filling balloons. Helium is in modern LED lighting devices, liquid crystal screens and monitors, magnetic resonance scanners, spacecraft and rocket engines, special breathing mixtures that are equally necessary for divers and doctors, modern metallurgy is impossible without it, and the hadron collider not working.
The United States dominates the international helium market, producing about 87 million cubic meters per year, but it is still not possible to rapidly increase production – to meet the needs of, say, Europe. Currently, due to the strongest opposition of the US Greens, the construction and start-up of fourteen new LNG production lines is blocked. This means that no increase in the production of dry natural gas and helium, respectively, should be expected. At the same time, according to the latest estimates, about 28 percent of the world’s helium is waiting in the bowels of our country, and after the launch of the Amur gas processing plant, Russia will claim a third of the world trade.
Separately, we should dwell on such a component as ammonia.
A colorless gas with a characteristic pungent odor is also obtained from natural gas by processing it at low temperatures and high pressure. The horizon of its application is wide and important. Most of the world’s ammonia is used to produce nitrogen fertilizers, ammonium nitrate and sulfate, and urea. On average, 800 kilograms of fertilizers are obtained from one ton of ammonia, without which the early spring feeding of winter, vegetable and row crops is impossible. Quite simply put: no ammonia – no crop. Modern agriculture is a complex mechanism in which almost all possible risks of a natural nature have been eliminated by the achievements of science and industry.
Over the weekend, Chancellor Olaf Scholz issued a statement that Germany’s and Europe’s rejection of Russian hydrocarbons, particularly natural gas, has become irreversible.
Mr. Scholz is a politician and loud populist maxims are excusable for him. It would be much more interesting to listen to, say, the CEO of the German corporation BASF, one of the largest complex chemical companies. BASF has an annual turnover of €64 billion and a wide range of products from polyurethanes to pill shells. Given that German industry is more than a third dependent on natural gas supplies, the question remains: where will German chemists get raw materials, how will German farmers fertilize arable land, and how will German financiers fill the coffers?
Translation: V. Sergeev
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