After reaching astronomical heights in the summer of 2022, European gas prices fell sharply in the autumn of that year. And following a brief spike in the summer of 2023, they then fell again. By February of 2024, they were not far from their pre-war average. Was the crisis finally over?
Alas, no. For the past twelve months, prices have been steadily rising and are now more than three times higher than their pre-war average. On 10 February, they surged above €58 per megawatt-hour, the natural gas equivalent of paying $100 per barrel of oil. “Absolutely destructive for energy-intensive manufacturing,” was the comment from Javier Blas, Bloomberg’s energy man.
Why are prices rising? Two reasons. The first is that, having been relatively lucky with the weather in 2022 and 2023, Europe faced a much colder and less windy winter in 2024: frigid temperatures have pushed up gas demand, while the lack of gusts has reduced supply from wind generation.
The second reason is that a transit agreement allowing Russia to supply gas to Europe through Ukraine – via its ironically named “Brotherhood” pipeline – came to an end in December. Despite the two countries being literally at war, Russia was still paying Ukraine transit fees for gas, and Ukraine was still allowing gas to pass through its territory, until just a month ago. Understandably, Ukraine chose not to renew the agreement this time.
Rising gas prices are having predictable effects on manufacturing output, as the quote above from Blas makes clear. The chart below plots a production index for energy-intensive industry in Germany since 2015. (That’s the sector most affected by high energy prices).
As you can see, the index remained stable from 2015 to 2020, and then quickly recovered after the pandemic. Yet it fell more or less continuously from late 2021 to late 2023. (Recall that Russia began reducing gas flows to Europe in late 2021, as a kind of intimidation tactic.) After a brief recovery at the start of 2024, when gas prices came close to their pre-war average, it has fallen again over the last six months.
Energy-intensive production is now substantially lower than it was even at the height of lockdown. And the data here only go up to December: since there’s a lag between prices and production, and prices have risen further since December, it’s likely that production is now even lower than indicated on the chart.
As you might expect, cratering energy-intensive production is dragging down industrial production more broadly, and largely explains why the country’s GDP hasn’t risen at all since 2019. With population increasing, this means that German living standards are now lower than they were five years ago.
One option for European policymakers would be to sign new LNG contracts with countries like the US and Qatar. The problem is that LNG is much more expensive than pipeline gas (owing to the inherent costs of transportation and “regasification”) and the only way to secure lower prices from suppliers is to sign long-term contracts. Yet nobody’s quite sure whether Russian pipeline gas will start flowing again once the Ukraine war ends, so parties on all sides are wary of entering into such contracts.
Europe’s present strategy, of hoping things just kind of work out, doesn’t seem very promising.
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Did Nike take this upon themselves or is it a distraction to avoid boycotting the English team games, or perhaps every team in the FA?
The PM thinks flags “are a source of pride, identity, who we are, and they’re perfect as they are”. Is that to maintain an illusion of national identity as it seems like everything else is considered fair-game?
I boycotted Nike 5 years ago for exploiting Chinese slave labour.
Actually, weren’t we supposed to be boycotting Nike because of that emaciated little man who parodies a woman? Delvaney dude…Wasn’t he modelling their sports bras, or some such nonsense? I feel like so much lunacy has happened between then and now, it’s hard to keep up.
I suppose I could try to double boycott them? Not sure what that might mean though.
One thing’s for sure, I was never a potential customer for their £125 football kit.
Well I can’t believe me and Sushi agree on something at last. Nobody should be going around bastardizing countries’ flags, period. On a separate topic, here’s a load of women behaving like they can’t find their way back to their padded cells. They don’t strike me as St George flag-wavers. I do like the meme underneath, and if you can’t see it it says: ”Support the country you live in or live in the country you support”. 100% concur;
”White British women shave their hair off to show solidarity with Palestine during a protest outside Parliament.
In the latest poll conducted in Gaza and the West Bank, 71% of Palestinians still support the Oct 7th massacre where hundreds of women were r*ped and over 1,200 men, women and children lost their lives.
The poll was conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.”
https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV/status/1771168810214584558
An interesting article on the New York Times October 7th Expose. Facts seem hard to come by.
“In the podcast interview, Schwartz details her extensive efforts to get confirmation from Israeli hospitals, rape crisis centers, trauma recovery facilities, and sex assault hotlines in Israel, as well as her inability to get a single confirmation from any of them. ‘She was told there had been no complaints made of sexual assaults,’ the Times spokesperson acknowledged after The Intercept brought the Channel 12 podcast episode to the paper’s attention.”
https://theintercept.com/2024/02/28/new-york-times-anat-schwartz-october-7/
The female bodies showed evidence of sexual assault and violence.
The Jews are never believed, are they.
I said facts seem hard to come by. This was the case for the “Israeli filmmaker and former air force intelligence official” Schwartz who worked on the NYT article attempting to verify the claims made.
Even your statement diverges significantly from the “hundreds of women were r*ped” claim.
“Shop with your own people. Try to trade with English men and women and shun the others who we never wanted here.”
Do you think similar comments preceded the persecution of groups such as Jews?
It’s hard to boycott a product I never have bought and never will.
Something tells me that the England games at Euro ’24 will be awash with traditional England shirts and flags with a healthy dose of Union Jack’s on top.
£125 for something Nike will have paid £1.25 for out of a sweatshop? Wearing one of the shirts is an outright boasting of one’s stupidity.
Gordon Bennett, the world has gone officially insane when hot cross buns are getting cancelled and receiving the Nike treatment!
”Iceland has removed the cross from some of its hot cross buns and is replacing it with a tick – infuriating shoppers who are now threatening to boycott the chain.
The British supermarket is running a trial ditching the cross, which symbolises the crucifixion of Jesus Christ that is remembered by Christians on Good Friday.
Iceland claimed its research had found a fifth of customers would prefer the buns to have a tick, which bears a resemblance to the logo of sportswear firm Nike – but the firm also insisted that traditional hot cross buns will still be available at its stores.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13222767/iceland-swap-symbol-good-friday-treat-upsetting-worshippers.html
Boycott
Shop with your own people. Try to trade with English men and women and shun the others who we never wanted here. Halal is disgusting muslim crap and must be boycotted utterly
What “research” did Iceland carry out and why? Surely there are more pressing concern from shoppers?
Go on – do a ‘playful’ update on ‘Old Glory’ for a USA team. I dare you.
Try putting a flag up in your garden and the thought police will be around telling you it is offensive to the rest of the world that are arriving in small boats everyday. Let’s not wait till something daft appears on a football shirt. We should have been kicking up a stink long before this.
Can’t go dafter than this. The Deputy Chief Fire Officer, Humberside
Cannot quite see that coloured thing on his lapel but I get the idea.
The weird thing is that Nike hasn’t “playfully” changed the flag designs of any other countries in the Euro 2024. Not one.
Only England. Globalists want to wipe out the whole idea of England and the English People and their descendants around the world.
Fans should demand that Nike “playfully” change the Crescent Moon & Star flag symbol on the Turkish team’s kit, and see how that would go down with the Turks.
Sunak and Starmer never slow to dash toward a passing bandwagon. And Sunak declares ‘our nations flags’ Which nation is that Sunak? You and your government have denigrated this country and done nothing to prevent huge and unwanted immigration and the replacement of our people.
Spot on. I just found some interesting information about his financial links to Infosys/Global/HORIZON, as in the Postmasters Scandal:
Sunak, “The Maharaja of the Dales”, transferred his shares to his wife shortly before being elected as the Conservative MP for Richmond in 2015. Since 2015, she has owned shares worth £481 million in her father’s firm Infosys/Global/HORIZON, and was richer than the late Queen, and richer than King Charles III as of October 2022.
And do forget that Infosys is one of the largest digital ID companies in the world… it’s coming whether we like it or not
Well isn’t it the FA rather than Nike? I mean the FA must have final say, surely? And in a similar vein surely the FA has some say in the price – they award the contract exclusively so they should be able to negotiate some terms. I’m no fan of Nike but the FA need to take some blame and some flak here. I love sport but not a fan of the marketing side of it anyway.
Ban the FA from naming the England Football team, they can play under another name.
Someone commenting on Neil Oliver’s GB News interview about this pointed out the real reason the England flag is hated by the Unholy Muslim-Marxist Alliance:
because it is the flag of the Crusaders.
I suspect many England players and the management team will be happy with this. They hate British values, kneel before black extremists, support trans cr@p and every other woke ideology. They do not represent England.
Nike are full on woke, I wouldn’t wear their brand for free.
Maybe Mike Ashley could bring out an England shirt with English flags and sell it for halk the price of Nike’s. I’d buy one even though I don’t watch football.