Publication: Profit
For decades, the European project has been built on this elegant belief, which today may seem naive. From the liberalized gas hubs of the Netherlands to the impeccable logistics of aviation fuel, the market has been the ultimate arbiter of efficiency, profitability and welfare. But that era seems to have come to a brutal structural end, under the shadow of the blockaded Strait of Hormuz, a barely simmering theater of war in the Middle East and a war in Ukraine that seems to have no end in sight. We are no longer just going through a series of unfortunate events. We had barely escaped it (the Covid 19 pandemic had brought the concept home to us), but here we are re-entering the era of „permacrisis” - a state of perpetual and overlapping shocks, where „emergency” is no longer a deviation from the norm, but the norm itself. While Brent crude is being pushed towards the $120 a barrel threshold, and QatarEnergy is invoking force majeure for the liquefied natural gas (LNG) that was supposed to save us, Europe is being thrown into a grim march towards an energy war economy.
