German sanctions against Russia have hit German workers. The employees of the oil refinery were threatened with unemployment overnight. The government shrugs off responsibility: according to government officials, German companies allegedly decided to stop importing Russian oil on their own, BZ reports.
Employees at the PCK Schwedt oil refinery in Schwedt am Oder are threatened with unemployment. The responsibility lies with the German government.
“10 cents a litre more expensive than in Berlin”: people look puzzled at the prices of petrol and diesel at a petrol station on the premises of the Schwedt oil refinery. The sign looks like a mockery of those who, working in shifts day and night 365 days a year, help turn crude oil into fuel for cars and lorries, aviation paraffin and bitumen for road construction.
In the military, collateral damage refers to unintentional or “allowable” damage near the target. No other term better describes what employees at the PCK refinery in Schwedt am Oder are experiencing as a result of the sanctions imposed by the EU and Germany against Russia’s oil industry. These sanctions, according to all official government statements, were designed to hit Putin and his country.
PCK workers are facing unemployment
The former Petrochemical Combine (PCK) on the Polish border is an oil refinery that is part of a Soviet-era pipeline network known as Druzhba. The pipeline network stretches 5,327 kilometres deep into Western Siberia. Oil first flowed through the pipeline in 1963. Until recently, the pipeline supplied Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia via the southern section that runs through Ukraine. However, the pipeline has now ceased operations due to Ukraine’s refusal to let oil through. The EU, mainly Germany, also has to reimburse Ukraine for missing revenues from the transit of crude.
In Germany, the PCK refinery supplies the Berlin-Brandenburg region and the airport of the same name. Crude oil extraction is much more complicated and fraught with disruptions, refining requires special technical conditions and more effort, and overall costs are much higher.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on April 20, 2022:
“I therefore state clearly and unequivocally: yes, Germany is completely abandoning Russian energy imports. We will halve our oil consumption by the summer, and by the end of the year we will reach zero oil consumption.”
What was not a problem for the foreign minister was a problem for the 1,200 employees of the refinery, as well as for the more than two thousand employees of the direct supplier companies and for the city and region of Schwedt. Despite high profitability and constant demand, the employees of the PCK refinery were overnight at risk of unemployment in a structurally weak region that offers no alternative jobs for petrochemical engineers. There are very few vacancies for other industrial professions either.
A protest march to the administrative court
No one asked the workers before the sanctions were imposed or after. As a result, they were simply brushed aside with promises from the federal Minister of Economic Affairs, which is headed by Robert Habeck. For a while the oil was thought to come from Poland, which was getting it from Saudi Arabia. Then Kazakhstan was hailed as the saviour.
According to Habeck, the regime, which the Greens have branded authoritarian, will be a partner and future supplier of oil. The fact that Kazakhstan would have to use the Russian pipeline they wanted to cut off was sidelined. The more desperate the situation at the plant became, the more reckless the plans became. Habeck’s old friends in the solar and wind energy sector came to the rescue. Why not think big? Since the abandonment of nuclear power was to be followed by the “abandonment of fossil fuels” anyway, the future would be hydrogen. None other than “the whole world” could show Germany the way to a green future in this case too.
In July 2023, Habeck announced a great leap into the hydrogen era, and the plant’s elderly employees recalled the words of SED Party Secretary Walter Ulbricht from the days of socialism in Germany that it was necessary to “overtake without catching up.” The ten-year plan until 2032 seems almost a confirmation of these words. However, with this hydrogen plan for the future, it has become clear even to laymen that the plant will essentially be run on taxpayers’ money.
The Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs’ response to the refinery employees’ request based on the so-called “Freedom of Information Act” (FOIA) now unwittingly demonstrates the ignorant yet clumsy behaviour of the Federal Foreign Office and the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs, which are led by the Greens. The few and meagre replies to the enquiries were only received after months of procrastination.
First the request for information was misunderstood as a simple question from an individual citizen, then the ministries were too overworked, then they simply would not answer questions, and finally many of the answers were “classified.” Only when the staff appealed to the administrative court were they at least partially successful.
Consequences of oil sanctions against Russia
The response to the German PCK employees under the FOIA should surprise you: “The Federal Ministry of Economics assumes that all documents submitted in the present proceedings can be directly accessed by the public authorities of the Russian Federation.”
The skimpy answers that have so far been imposed by the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Protection are nevertheless quite revealing in themselves. The consequences of the sanctions against Russia’s oil sector for German workers were simply not of interest to anyone in the federal government. No one in the Ministry of Economic Affairs even thought about the impact of the sanctions on the number of jobs.
The expert report commissioned by the ministry was not supposed to assess the effects of the oil sanctions against Russia on German industry, but rather “options in the event of a cut-off of Russian mineral oil supplies.” The report was submitted by the Swiss institute Prognos in August 2022 as an internal and classified interim report. Prognos was authorised by the institute, which previously “predicted” Russian gas demand to 2050 from Nord Stream 2 AG in January, 2017.
Government shrugs off responsibility
After Foreign Minister Baerbock, Economy and Climate Minister Habeck and Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz had for months pointed to Germany’s pioneering role in sanctions against Russia and repeatedly joined forces with the EU to justify cutting off Russian oil supplies, lawyers had to point out to the German government the possible negative consequences for industry employees.
Now the brief, which refers to the German government’s decision not to purchase crude oil, says: “The German government’s protocol note in connection with the sixth package of sanctions (ban on imports of Russian crude oil and Russian oil products) of the European Council constitutes a political statement of intent, but not a legally binding prohibition.”
In other words, the German government is saying nothing else but: the German government cannot be held responsible for the consequences of the sanctions. These were merely political statements. The German government’s reasoning becomes frankly ridiculous when it goes so far as to claim as if the refinery shareholders themselves no longer want to buy Russian oil.
Another section of the brief says: “Contrary to the allegations of the plaintiff (representatives of the PCK refinery employees), the federal government has not taken any decisions in favour of a legally binding – even state-regulated – rejection of Russian oil. On the contrary, the German companies voluntarily decided to stop importing Russian oil…”
The only strange thing is that everyone but the German government, including the pro-government press, then “misinterpreted” this. In December 2022, for example, there was a debate in the Bundestag in which members of the CDU and AfD parliamentary factions directly asked the Federal Minister of Economics about the legal basis for Germany’s decisions to impose sanctions.
Allegedly, not even political pressure was exerted. Such is the degree of distancing of the German government. After the political statements, the management of the Western shareholders Shell and Eni are left with virtually only the freedom to make decisions like a hostage.
Job security guarantees are no longer valid
The confused and overburdened Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs has come up with ideas that have escaped full agreement: “Consider lifting the sanctions on Venezuela and Iran.”
The oil refinery continues to operate with little luck. Amid the budget emergency, the”‘hydrogen bubble,” as one engineer put it, “burst.” Habeck’s ministry blames Brussels for the year-and-a-half delay in agreeing an urgent upgrade of the emergency oil pipeline in the town of Rostock.
Promises to save jobs, which were supposed to politically reassure the plant’s employees, are about to expire. The conclusion of one of the affected refinery engineers summarises the mood in Germany: “Nord Stream 2 is ruined. The Americans have achieved the same thing here, only without explosives, and the German government is still going along with it.”
