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    How Finnair’s Huge Bet on Faster Flights to Asia Suddenly Came Undone

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    Nestled near Europe’s rooftop, Finland spent decades leveraging its location to become a popular gateway for Asian travelers. Its flagship airline, Finnair, offered flights from Tokyo, Seoul and Shanghai to Helsinki that, by crossing over Russia, were hours shorter than flights to any other European capital. Airport chiefs invested nearly $1 billion in a new terminal with streamlined transfers. There were signs in Japanese, Korean and Chinese, and hot water dispensers for the instant noodle packets favored by Chinese tourists.Then Russia sent troops across Ukraine’s border on Feb. 24, and overnight the carefully constructed game table was overturned.Russia closed its airspace to most European carriers in response to bans on Russian planes. What was once a nine-hour flight to Helsinki when routed over Russia’s 3,000-mile expanse would now take 13 hours and as much as 40 percent more fuel because it had to swoop around borders.Finnair’s competitive advantage as the fastest connection from Asia and a travel hub for Europe vanished in a wisp.The sudden disintegration of Finnair’s business model is part of the wide-ranging economic upheaval that the war in Ukraine is causing for businesses around the globe.Companies that invested or traded heavily with Russia were immediately affected, and more than 1,000 have withdrawn operations from Russia, according to a database compiled by the Yale School of Management.Juho Kuva for The New York TimesNearly $1 billion was spent to build a terminal in the Helsinki, Finland, airport to streamline transfers for passengers from outside Europe.When Russia closed its airspace, Finnair could no longer pitch itself as the fastest connection from Asia.“The Asia strategy had been 20 years in the making,” Topi Manner, Finnair’s chief executive, said.High energy prices have blitzed a wider range. The Hungarian Opera House’s Erkel Theater will temporarily close because it cannot pay its energy bill. Hakle, one of the largest manufacturers of toilet paper in Germany, declared insolvency because of soaring energy costs, while ceramic, glass, chemical, fertilizer and other factories across Europe have been forced to scale back or shut down.The snack food industry, unable to get sufficient supplies of sunflower oil from Ukraine, has had to scramble for substitutes like palm oil, forcing manufacturers to rejigger supply chains, production and labeling, since they could no longer boast that their products were “nonallergenic” and “non-G.M.O.”The closed airspace caused Japan Airlines and ANA to cancel flights to Europe. And this month Virgin Atlantic said it was ceasing all traffic to and from Hong Kong because of Russia’s ban. For Finnair, though, the fallout has been extreme.“The Asia strategy had been 20 years in the making,” Topi Manner, Finnair’s chief executive, said from the company’s headquarters, next to the Helsinki terminal in Vantaa. Services were tailored to meet the tastes of its Asian customers. Half of its in-flight movies are dubbed or subtitled in Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Meal offerings include crispy chicken in Chinese garlic and oyster sauce and Korean-style stir-fried pork in spicy sauce with bok choy and steamed rice. The airline’s ground staff in Helsinki are fluent in the region’s native languages.Market Square in central Helsinki.Before the coronavirus pandemic, half of the airline’s revenue was generated by travelers from Asia. Passengers that used Helsinki as a hub to transfer to other destinations accounted for 60 percent of the revenue.But with “no end in sight” to the war, Mr. Manner said, the airline’s management quickly concluded “that Russian airspace will remain closed to European carriers for a long time and we need to adapt to that reality.”This summer, Finnair operated 76 flights between Helsinki and Asia, compared to 198 in the summer of 2019. Overall, the airline is going at 68 percent of its capacity. Operating losses in the first half of this year amounted to 217 million euros.“We really have to regroup,” Mr. Manner said.In some respects, Finnair has been regrouping ever since the pandemic hit in early 2020 and virtually halted world travel. China’s “zero Covid” policy, which continued to lock down Shanghai and other major cities this year, sharply reduced East-West traffic, hampering Finnair’s recovery compared with airlines that have large domestic markets or operate in other regions. Finnair, half of which is owned by the government, fought to survive by furloughing employees, cutting costs and raising 3 billion euros in new financing.Juho Kuva for The New York TimesThe new terminal was expected to draw 30 million passengers by 2030, a projection that has been thrown out by the uncertainty now facing Finnair’s Asia strategy.The project aimed to improve services for the connecting passengers from Asia who would never leave the airport.A 2017 publicity campaign by the state-owned company that runs Finland’s terminals primarily targeted customers from China.“We created a path through the pandemic,” Mr. Manner said, but it always was intended to lead “back to the Asia strategy.”No longer. Last month, the company officially announced an about-face.“We started to pivot our network toward the West,” Mr. Manner said, expanding its partnership with American Airlines, British Airways and other carriers. In the spring, it launched four new weekly flights from Dallas-Fort Worth and three from Seattle. New routes from Helsinki to Stockholm, Copenhagen, Mumbai, India, and Doha, Qatar, have also been unveiled. As jet fuel prices skyrocket, the airline is also renting out planes and crews to other airlines, and it plans to shrink the size of its fleet and staff, and to slash costs.Finnair, which has lost 1.3 billion euros over the past three years, said it hoped to return to profitability in 2024.“It will take some time before the company gets to see if this is the right decision,” said Jaakko Tyrväinen, an airline analyst with SEB, a Nordic financial services group.For the new Helsinki terminal — which opened in June — a strategy shift was also needed.Central Helsinki.An estimated 30 million passengers were expected by 2030, up from the nearly 22 million that the existing terminals handled in 2019. Those projections are now irrelevant, and airport officials say the situation is too uncertain to make any meaningful update to that figure. Next year, 15 million travelers are expected to pass through.Perhaps more pointedly, the project, begun nearly a decade ago, was designed to improve services for transfer passengers from Asia — a majority of whom would never leave the airport.A multimedia publicity campaign that Finavia, the state-owned company that runs the country’s airline terminals, rolled out in 2017 for Helsinki airport — code letters HEL — primarily targeted customers from China. With a nod to the 2004 film “The Terminal,” the campaign, “Life in HEL,” featured Ryan Jhu, a popular Chinese actor and social media influencer, living for a month in the terminal.Now, Helsinki has an expansive new terminal dedicated to non-European transfer traffic but very few travelers.Juho Kuva for The New York TimesThe project to build the new terminal was begun nearly a decade ago.The spacious aukio, or meeting plaza, includes a wraparound video installation depicting Finnish landscapes.The upshot to the changes forced upon Finnair is vastly fewer connecting passengers in a terminal designed for them.On a recent weekday afternoon, the long, snaking lanes created to handle crowds at passport control were deserted. The spacious aukio, or meeting plaza, where passengers could sit and watch a wraparound video installation depicting Finnish landscapes, hosted a lone woman with a backpack. Moomin Shop, which sells merchandise related to the Finnish cartoon characters — particularly popular with Japanese visitors — had no customers. The Moomin cafe, farther down the main hallway, was mostly deserted.“Mornings are normally slow,” said Liccely Del Carpio, who works at the Moomin store, adding that business often picks up later in the afternoon. “All in all, it’s been OK.”The European terminal was bustling, but most of the shops and cafes that stretched along this terminal’s long hall were empty. Several other spaces were unleased or shuttered.Sami Kiiskinen, the vice president of airport development at Finavia, said that the hundreds of millions of euros in loans used to construct the airport would ultimately be repaid, but that “the schedule of paybacks must be reconsidered.” Negotiations are happening, he said.Yet, despite the likelihood that the war in Ukraine will drag on and Russian airspace will remain closed to European traffic, Mr. Kiiskinen is optimistic.“We still believe in our strategy,” he said. Major infrastructure developments like airports are designed on a 50-year horizon, he said. “Putin is not going to be there forever.”Juho Kuva for The New York TimesOn a recent weekday afternoon, a cafe branded for Moomin merchandise, cartoon characters popular with Japanese visitors, was mostly deserted.Sami Kiiskinen of Finavia, which runs the terminal, acknowledged the problems facing the project’s finances but remained optimistic over the long run: “Putin is not going to be there forever.”The new terminal at the Helsinki airport is just one of numerous commercial ventures across Europe that have been affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. More

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    Lessons From Liz Truss’s Handling of U.K. Inflation

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    The sharp policy U-turn by Liz Truss, Britain’s prime minister, reveals the perils of taking the wrong path in the fight against scalding inflation.Government leaders in the West are struggling with rising inflation, slowing growth, and anxious electorates worried about winter and high energy bills. But Liz Truss, Britain’s prime minister, is the only one who devised an economic plan that unnerved financial markets, drew the ire of global leaders and the public and undermined her political standing.On Friday, battered by savage criticism, she retreated. Ms. Truss fired her top finance official, Kwasi Kwarteng, for creating precisely the package of unfunded tax cuts, billion-dollar spending programs and deregulation that she had asked for.She reinstated a scheduled increase in corporate taxes to 25 percent from 19 percent, a rise she had previously opposed. That announcement came on top of backtracking last week on her proposal to eliminate the top 45 percent income tax on the highest earners. The prime minister, in office a little over five weeks, also promised that spending would grow less rapidly than proposed, although no specifics were offered.The drama is still playing out, and it’s unclear if the Truss government will survive.In the United States, President Biden, while waging his own political battles over gas prices and inflation, has not proposed anything like the kind of policies that Ms. Truss’s government attempted, nor have any other leaders in Europe.Still, for European governments whose economies are suffering greatly from shocks and energy price surges caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine, there are timely lessons from the debacle playing out in London.One of the strongest was delivered early on by the International Monetary Fund: Don’t undermine your own central bankers. The I.M.F., which usually reserves such scoldings for developing nations, on Thursday doubled down on its message. “Don’t prolong the pain,” Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director, admonished.How to blunt the impact of inflation on the most vulnerable without further stoking inflation is the dilemma that every government is confronting.The Bank of England in London has aggressively tried to slow the sharp rise in prices by slowing the British economy.Alberto Pezzali/Associated Press“That is the question of the hour,” said Eswar Prasad, an economist at Cornell University who was attending the annual meetings of the World Bank and I.M.F. in Washington this week.Tension between the fiscal spending policies proposed by a government and the monetary policies controlled by central banks is not unusual. At the moment, though, central bankers are engaged in delicate policy maneuvers in the fight against a level of inflation not seen in decades. With the rate in Britain nearing 10 percent, the Bank of England has moved aggressively to slow down climbing prices through a series of interest rate increases aimed at crimping consumer and business spending.Any expansion of government spending is going to interfere with that aim to some degree, but Ms. Truss’s plan was far too big and too ill defined, Mr. Prasad said.“Measures to help households hit hard by energy increases, by themselves, would not have created that much of a stir,” he said. Many other countries have proposed exactly that. And the European Union has proposed a windfall tax on energy profits to help finance those subsidies.Ms. Truss, instead of coming up with a way to pay for energy assistance, pushed to eliminate a corporate tax increase and cut income taxes for the wealthiest segment of the population. The result was a reduction in government revenue and a ballooning of Britain’s debt.“Overall, the package did not have much clarity in terms of how it would support the economy in the short run without raising inflation,” Mr. Prasad said.By contrast, Claus Vistesen, chief eurozone economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, cited the way governments and central banks worked in tandem when the pandemic struck in 2020 to keep economies from collapsing, issuing vast amounts of public debt.“Central banks printed every single dollar, euro and pound that governments spent” to support households and businesses because of the Covid crisis, Mr. Vistesen said. But now the circumstances have changed, and inflation is setting economies aflame.The actions of the Federal Reserve in the United States illustrate the switch central banks have made: In the harrowing early weeks of the global outbreak of the coronavirus, the Fed embarked on an extraordinary program to stimulate the economy and stabilize markets. This year, the Fed has been swiftly raising interest rates in a bid to slow growth.Both the United States and eurozone countries have somewhat more wiggle room than Britain, because the dollar and the euro are much more widely used around the world as currencies held in reserve than the British pound.Kwasi Kwarteng, Britain’s former chancellor of the Exchequer, left 11 Downing Street after Ms. Truss fired him on Friday.Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated PressEven so, European governments can help households and businesses get through an energy crisis, Mr. Vistesen said, but they can’t embark on an open-ended spending spree.They also need to take account of what is happening in other economies. The richest countries that make up the Group of 7 are essentially part of the same “monetary and fiscal convoy,” said Will Hutton, president of the Academy of Social Sciences. By championing a Thatcher-era blend of steep tax cuts and deregulation, he said, the Truss government strayed too far from the rest of the flotilla and the economic mainstream.The adherence to 1980s-era trickle-down verities also revealed the risks of sticking with outdated policies in the face of changing circumstances, said Diane Coyle, a ​​public policy professor at the University of Cambridge.“The situation in 1979 was very different,” Ms. Coyle said. “There were sclerotic high taxes and an overregulated economy, but not anymore.” Today, taxes in Britain are lower, and the economy is less regulated than the average member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a club of 38 major economies.“The character of the economy has changed,” she said. “Public investment in research and skills are more important.”In that sense, what was missing from Ms. Truss’s economic plan was as important as what was included. And what Britain is lacking, said Mariana Mazzucato, an economist at University College London, is a visionary public investment program like the trillion-dollar climate and digitalization plans adopted by the European Union or the climate and infrastructure program in the United States.A rate of Inflation nearing 10 percent in Britain has affected the price of groceries and how people spend their money.Alex Ingram for The New York Times“If you don’t have a growth plan, an industrial strategy innovation policy,” Ms. Mazzucato said, “then your economy won’t expand.”Both Ms. Mazzucato and Ms. Coyle emphasized that Britain had some specific economic handicaps that predated the Truss administration, including the 2016 vote to exit the European Union, a stubborn lack of productivity, anemic business investment, and lagging research and development.Still, Ms. Coyle offered some advice that referred pointedly to Ms. Truss. “I think the main lesson is: Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.” More

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    Biden’s ‘Made in America’ Policies Anger Key Allies

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    The president’s plans to bolster America’s electric vehicle and battery production have opened a rift in relationships in Asia and Europe.WASHINGTON — President Biden’s efforts to bolster domestic manufacturing are coming under diplomatic fire from key allies, with European governments accusing his administration of undercutting the trans-Atlantic alliance with “Made in America” policies that threaten their economies.The objections center on policies included in the Inflation Reduction Act, which aims to make the United States less reliant on foreign suppliers by providing financial incentives to locate factories and produce goods in the United States, including electric vehicles. Mr. Biden has touted the law as key to creating “tens of thousands of good-paying jobs and clean energy manufacturing jobs, solar factories in the Midwest and the South, wind farms across the plains and off our shores, clean hydrogen projects and more — all across America, every part of America.”But that has prompted cries of protectionism by foreign officials and accusations that the Biden administration is violating trade laws by giving preferential treatment to U.S.-based firms.“We are having concerns that a number of the provisions are discriminatory against E.U. companies, which of course obviously is a problem for us,” Valdis Dombrovskis, the European Union’s commissioner for trade, told reporters in Washington on Thursday.The disagreement represents the first major rift between the United States and Europe since Mr. Biden took office last year. The president, who promised to take a softer diplomatic touch than the Trump administration had with its “America First” agenda, has worked closely with European allies on a number of priorities, including punishing Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. In his first months in office, Mr. Biden quickly moved to repair relations with Europe, including by resolving a 17-year dispute over aviation subsidies.But the unified front between the United States and Europe showed signs of strain during this week’s annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. European officials complained to the top ranks of the Biden administration that provisions in the expansive climate and energy law to support domestic production of electric vehicles violate international trade rules that require countries to treat foreign and domestic companies equally. They argued the provisions are unfair to their domestic car industries.Mr. Dombrovskis said that he and other European officials would be directing their concerns to Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, whose agency is responsible for implementing much of the law, along with Katherine Tai, the U. S. trade representative, and Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary.Read More on Electric VehiclesRivian Recall: The electric-car maker said that it was recalling 13,000 vehicles after identifying an issue that could affect drivers’ ability to steer some of its vehicles.China’s Thriving E.V. Market: More electric cars will be sold in the country this year than in the rest of the world combined, as its domestic market accelerates ahead of the global competition.A Crucial Mine: A thousand feet below wetlands in northern Minnesota are ancient deposits of nickel, a sought-after mineral seen as key to the future of the U.S. electric car industry.Banning Gasoline Cars: California is leading the way in the push to electrify the nation’s car fleet with a plan to ban sales of new internal-combustion vehicles by 2035, but the rule will face several challenges.In a meeting with Mr. Dombrovskis on Thursday, Ms. Tai “shared her view that seriously combating the climate crisis will require increased investments in clean energy technologies,” the Office of the United States Trade Representative said in a statement. Both Ms. Tai and Mr. Dombrovskis “asked their teams to increase engagement” on the issue.European officials are discussing whether to contest the law, which was passed by Democrats along party lines, at the World Trade Organization, which could be time consuming and fruitless, or to formally raise the matter through the Trade and Technology Council that was formed last year.The crux of the international fight centers on more than $50 billion in tax credits to entice Americans to buy electric vehicles. The law restricts the credit to vehicles that are assembled in North America. It also has strict requirements surrounding the components that go into powering electric vehicles, including batteries and the critical minerals that are used to make them. That is creating new incentives for battery makers to build recycling and production facilities in the United States.Foreign companies that manufacture cars and car parts in the United States can also qualify for the credit. But some foreign carmakers, particularly those from Asia, tend to import more components for electric vehicles from outside the United States, meaning that fewer of their models qualify.That has sparked accusations that the terms of the law were written to benefit U.S. companies like General Motors or Ford, rather than foreign companies like Toyota and Honda, even though many foreign companies have invested heavily in the United States.“We understand that some trading partners have concerns with how the EV tax credit provisions in the law will operate in practice with respect to their producers,” said Eduardo Maia Silva, a spokesman for the National Security Council. “We are committed to working with our partners to better understand their concerns and keep open channels of engagement on these issues.”European officials are concerned that the U.S. law will drive a wedge between European companies and their home countries if carmakers such as Porsche are under pressure to set up shop in the United States instead of opening more factories in Germany. Since the law went into effect, Honda, Toyota and LG Energy Solutions of South Korea have all announced major battery investments in the United States.A previous version of the bill would have offered the tax credit to only U.S.-produced vehicles. But Canada and Mexico both lobbied against that draft version, and the measure was ultimately expanded to apply to vehicles produced throughout North America.Asian allies have also expressed concerns about the law.When Vice President Kamala Harris met with South Korean leaders in Tokyo and Seoul last month, the allies did not hesitate to express their frustration.Hours before Ms. Harris attended the funeral of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, Korean officials, including Prime Minister Han Duck-soo expressed their concerns about the legislation to the vice president in a closed-door meeting. The Japanese government has also expressed concerns.Frank Aum, a senior expert on Northeast Asia at the U.S. Institute of Peace, said the tax credit was a “direct harm” to South Korean companies like Hyundai and Kia that wouldn’t get the benefit of the tax credit.“South Korea is feeling very much betrayed because of the investments that they have made in the electric vehicle battery and semiconductor industries in the U.S. over the last couple years,” he said.Just months before he signed it into law, Mr. Biden stood with the chairman of Hyundai in Seoul to celebrate the South Korean company’s investment in a new electric vehicle and battery manufacturing facility in Savannah, Ga. In meetings with Mr. Han and later with President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea in Seoul, Ms. Harris said she would consult with South Korea as the law is implemented. The Biden administration has downplayed the tensions, saying that it is relying on its strong relationships with other governments to talk through those differences and fight the bigger battle of climate change.In an Oct. 7 speech at the Roosevelt Institute, a Washington think tank, Ms. Tai called out the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism — a proposal that would encourage cleaner manufacturing by levying a tax on imported goods based on how many greenhouse gasses their production emits — saying that those European measure could also cause tensions with allies. But the United States and Europe should work through those differences to combat climate change together, she added.“As we seek to reduce our carbon footprints and benefit our industries, we’re each going to do things that cause anxiety, whether it’s the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism or the Inflation Reduction Act. But this also creates an opportunity for us to work together, to tackle this existential crisis that threatens all of us,” Ms. Tai said.Still, trade experts have warned that the U.S. efforts could potentially kick off a similar wave of protectionist measures to match those adopted by the United States.Bruno Le Maire, France’s finance minister, said last month that the European Union should consider adopting electric vehicle bonuses for cars that are produced within the E.U. and meet rigorous environmental standards.In that event, America’s policies could backfire in the long run, if American cars or components face similar barriers to being sold in Europe or Asia, said Chad P. Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.“I think the risk on the U.S. side is that if we don’t address some of their major concerns, that they’ll ultimately do the same thing,” he said.Wally Adeyemo, the deputy Treasury secretary, said at an event this week that he hopes that eventually U.S. allies will benefit from America’s investment in its production of goods such as critical minerals because it will also solidify their supply chains.A Treasury Department spokeswoman declined to comment on how Ms. Yellen responded to the complaints of her European counterparts this week. In remarks at her closing news conference on Friday, Ms. Yellen touted the ambitions of the Inflation Reduction Act without acknowledging the concerns in Europe and Asia.“It’s our nation’s most aggressive domestic action on climate,” Ms. Yellen said. “And it puts us on a strong path to meet our emissions reduction goals.” More

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    How a Looming Oil Ban Could Devastate a Small Italian City

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    Like thousands of Sicilians who live near Priolo Gargallo, part of an industrial petrochemical hub on this island’s southeastern coast, Davide Mauro has tied his livelihood to the giant Russian-owned Lukoil refinery — a landscape of towering chimney stacks, steel cranes and flat-topped gas tanks that rise above the Ionian Sea’s brilliant turquoise waters.Ever since the European Union agreed to ban most imports of crude oil from Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine, the future of this refinery — the largest in Italy — has been thrown into doubt. The deadline for the embargo is less than three months away, but workers still have no idea whether they will have jobs once it goes into effect on Dec. 5.“The company never says anything official,” said Mr. Mauro, a shift operator who has worked for 20 years at a plant that supplies the oil refinery with power. There has been talk of the Italian government’s possibly nationalizing the facility or guaranteeing new lines of credit. Most recently, there has been talk of an interested American buyer. But Mr. Mauro said: “It’s all rumors. Nothing’s clear.”The uncertainty hanging over the Lukoil refinery is a potent example of how the hard-won unified opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is rippling, sometimes in unintended ways, through Europe, straining local economies and fanning political tensions.Davide Mauro, a shift worker at the ISAB Lukoil refinery, at his home in Siracusa. He fears losing his job after Europe’s embargo on Russian oil goes into effect.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesSoaring fuel and food prices have eroded living standards. European leaders have already warned that rationing, factory closures and blackouts may be coming this winter. But in places like the Siracusa province of Sicily, the economic sanctions against Russia — previously Europe’s largest supplier of energy — carry a particular sting.Areas bearing a disproportionate share of the economic burden can be found all over the continent: in Schwedt, Germany, where an oil refinery also depends on Russian crude; in Arques, France, where an energy-hungry glass factory can’t afford to keep the furnaces running; and in Tertre, Belgium, where high natural gas prices have compelled the fertilizer company Yara to shutter its operation.If the Lukoil site in Priolo closes, Mr. Mauro said, he will probably have to leave this place, where he was born. The unemployment rate in Sicily is nearly 19 percent — one of the highest in the European Union. Finding a well-paying job like the one Mr. Mauro has with Lukoil would be next to impossible.“It’s a nightmare,” he said. “My entire life is here.”Lukoil, the largest private corporation in Russia, was not singled out by sanctions by any country when the Ukraine war started in February. Still, many banks and other financial institutions decided to avoid doing business with Russian companies after the European Union imposed sanctions. And so Lukoil lost lines of credit, which it had used to finance purchases of crude from suppliers outside Russia.Before the war, the Priolo refinery, known as ISAB after its former owner, got roughly 40 to 50 percent of its oil from Russia. Now with those other sources off limits, its only alternative was to get all of its crude from Lukoil.Oil tankers at the ISAB Lukoil oil terminal. Before the war in Ukraine, the Priolo refinery got roughly 40 to 50 percent of its oil from Russia.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesA Lukoil gas station in Priolo. Although Lukoil is not under sanctions, lenders have stopped providing financing after the European Union imposed sanctions on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesBut when the European Union’s oil embargo kicks in, no Russian oil will be allowed in. Without a financial rescue plan that would allow it to buy non-Russian oil, the plant faces closure and job cuts.“The impact on the community will be devastating,” Giuseppe Gianni, the mayor of Priolo, said from his office, lighting a small cigar. Above his desk hung a gold crucifix and an enormous painting of a Madonna and Child under a fig tree. Outside the window is a small pastel-colored playground with a view of the refinery as a backdrop.Mr. Gianni acknowledged that the petrochemical complex had been linked to toxic air, water pollution and cancer, which he said needed to be resolved, but he maintained that closing the refinery would blight the area’s economy.The refinery, which processes more than a fifth of Italy’s crude oil in addition to exports to other countries, employs about 1,000 workers directly. Two thousand more are contractors working on maintenance and mechanical projects. Another 7,500 in the area — from truck drivers to seamen — would be affected by the widespread layoffs.Several other energy and petrochemical companies including Sasol, Sonatrach and Versalis are in the area, and representatives have said that because the plants produce and buy products from one another and share contractors and supply chains, their economic futures are linked.Giuseppe Gianni, the mayor of Priolo, said closing the Priolo refinery would blight the local economy.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesWorkers for ISAB taking a bus home after their shift in Priolo.Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times“The effect would be destabilizing for the whole industrial area,” said Carmelo Rapisarda, the head of the industrial sector of the C.G.I.L. trade union in Siracusa, adding that the 35-kilometer industrial hub accounts for half the province’s economy.The looming oil embargo has forced the region to suddenly confront a long-simmering crisis. The European Union’s decision to transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources means that the life span of the ISAB refinery and two others on Sicily’s coast is limited.“The situation was already critical regardless of the war,” Mr. Rapisarda said.Last year, Confindustria Siracusa, the area’s industrial association, proposed a $3 billion conversion plan to develop new clean facilities that could reduce carbon emissions and produce hydrogen. But both the Italian government and the European Union have been reluctant to spend money to help the oil industry transition.Aside from the economic fallout on the region, the refinery is important to Italy’s energy security, said Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a research group in Brussels. “They cannot let the refinery close down” right away, he said. It is needed “to ensure the provision of oil products, mainly to southern Italy” during the transition.The political situation is complicating the search for a quick solution. Mario Draghi’s national unity government fell in July, and he is in a caretaker role until elections on Sunday. Giorgia Meloni, the hard-right leader of Brothers of Italy, is leading in the polls.Once a vocal admirer of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Ms. Meloni has recently said she supports following the European Union sanctions and sending weapons to Ukraine.Whoever wins the election will inherit the fallout from the oil embargo. But in the meantime, the situation is becoming urgent. To meet the Dec. 5 deadline of ending seaborne imports, the plant would have to start preparing for a shutdown in November and halt deliveries. Various figures, including the outgoing ecological minister, have mentioned the possibility of nationalizing the refinery. In Germany, the government last week took control of three refineries owned by the Russian oil company Rosneft.But Claudio Geraci, vice president of Confindustria Siracusa, dismissed the idea of nationalization as absurd. Mr. Geraci, who is deputy general manager for human resources and external relations at ISAB in Sicily, emphasized that he was speaking solely in his capacity as vice president of the industrial association. “As ISAB’s manager, there is no comment,” he said. In response to queries, press representatives at Lukoil’s headquarters in Moscow declined to comment.Carmelo Rapisarda, a C.G.I.L. union representative, said closing the refinery “would be destabilizing for the whole industrial area.”Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesA Lukoil gas station near the ISAB Lukoil refinery in Priolo.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesMr. Geraci said “the only possibility” was for the government to guarantee a line of credit so that the company could buy crude from non-Russian sources. But he added that “from Confindustria’s point of view, the situation is difficult,” because the Italian government does not want to be seen as helping a Russian company.Local political leaders said there had been interest from potential outside investors. According to union officials, representatives from Crossbridge Energy Partners, a New York-based company that converts traditional energy infrastructure, had recently visited the plant. Crossbridge said it had no comment.Any meaningful and sustainable conversion plan would need significant public investment, said Lucrezia Reichlin, the founder and president of the Ortygia Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to promoting development in southern Italy and located about five miles south of Priolo.Given the region’s important industrial tradition, such an approach makes sense, Ms. Reichlin said. But with the political uncertainty, she added, “I doubt that we’ll have a government that is ambitious enough to look at this situation with a long-term view toward the energy transition.”Ms. Reichlin, who is also an economics professor at the London Business School, said the Italian government was likely to fall back on a familiar and expensive stopgap measure: public assistance for employees who lose their jobs.For now, it seems that workers like Mr. Mauro, politicians like Mayor Gianni and industrial leaders like Mr. Geraci are operating on a wing and a prayer, inveighing against the inaction, while hoping for a last-minute miracle.“It’s like the bank that is too big to fail,” Mr. Mauro said of the refinery and his hope for a bailout. But the precise solution is still murky. “It’s a typical Italian situation,” he added. “I’m sure we will know what happens only at the last moment.”The Bar La Conchiglia, a cafe frequented by refinery workers in Priolo.Gianni Cipriano for The New York Times More

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    Shock Waves Hit the Global Economy, Posing Grave Risk to Europe

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    The threat to Europe’s industrial might and living standards is particularly acute as policymakers race to decouple the continent from Russia’s power sources.Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the continuing effects of the pandemic have hobbled countries around the globe, but the relentless series of crises has hit Europe the hardest, causing the steepest jump in energy prices, some of the highest inflation rates and the biggest risk of recession.The fallout from the war is menacing the continent with what some fear could become its most challenging economic and financial crisis in decades.While growth is slowing worldwide, “in Europe it’s altogether more serious because it’s driven by a more fundamental deterioration,” said Neil Shearing, group chief economist at Capital Economics. Real incomes and living standards are falling, he added. “Europe and Britain are just worse off.”Several countries, including Germany, the region’s largest economy, built up a decades-long dependence on Russian energy. The eightfold increase in natural gas prices since the war began presents a historic threat to Europe’s industrial might, living standards, and social peace and cohesion. Plans for factory closings, rolling blackouts and rationing are being drawn up in case of severe shortages this winter.The risk of sinking incomes, growing inequality and rising social tensions could lead “not only to a fractured society but a fractured world,” said Ian Goldin, a professor of globalization and development at Oxford University. “We haven’t faced anything like this since the 1970s, and it’s not ending soon.”Other regions of the world are also being squeezed, although some of the causes — and prospects — differ.Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned energy company, said this week that it would not resume the flow of natural gas through its Nord Stream 1 pipeline until Europe lifted Ukraine-related sanctions.Hannibal Hanschke/EPA, via ShutterstockHigher interest rates, which are being deployed aggressively to quell inflation, are trimming consumer spending and growth in the United States. Still, the American labor market remains strong, and the economy is moving forward.China, a powerful engine of global growth and a major market for European exports like cars, machinery and food, is facing its own set of problems. Beijing’s policy of continuing to freeze all activity during Covid-19 outbreaks has repeatedly paralyzed large swaths of the economy and added to worldwide supply chain disruptions. In the last few weeks alone, dozens of cities and more than 300 million people have been under full or partial lockdowns. Extreme heat and drought have hamstrung hydropower generation, forcing additional factory closings and rolling blackouts.A troubled real estate market has added to the economic instability in China. Hundreds of thousands of people are refusing to pay their mortgages because they have lost confidence that developers will ever deliver their unfinished housing units. Trade with the rest of the world took a hit in August, and overall economic growth, although likely to outrun rates in the United States and Europe, looks as if it will slip to its slowest pace in a decade this year. The prospect has prompted China’s central bank to cut interest rates in hopes of stimulating the economy.Understand the Decline in U.S. Gas PricesCard 1 of 5Understand the Decline in U.S. Gas PricesGas prices are falling. More

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    EU Leaders Say Putin’s Gas Power Is Weakening

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    In Germany and elsewhere, leaders are growing more confident that months of work to stockpile and line up alternate energy sources may help them blunt Russia’s weaponization of exports.BERLIN — Not long after Russian forces invaded Ukraine, another mobilization began. European energy ministers and diplomats started jetting across the world and inking energy deals — racing to prepare for a rough winter should Russia choose to cut off its cheap gas in retaliation for Western sanctions.Since then, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has fiddled with the gas tap to Europe repeatedly. Through Gazprom, the Kremlin-controlled gas monopoly, Russia has vastly reduced supplies or suspended them for days at a time — until last week, when it announced that it would indefinitely halt flows through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline that supplies Germany, and through it, much of Europe.Yet when the blow finally came, it provoked more ridicule than outrage among European leaders, who say that by now they would expect nothing less from Mr. Putin and that they have accepted that the era of cheap Russian gas is over, unimaginable as that might have seemed just months ago.In some corners, even as Europe’s leaders scramble to blunt the blow from lower gas supplies and higher prices, there is a growing sense that perhaps Russia’s weaponizing of gas exports is a strategy of diminishing returns — and that Mr. Putin may have overplayed his hand.“It would have been surprising the other way around,” Robert Habeck, Germany’s economy minister, said this week of Russia’s announcement that Nord Stream 1 would remain shut. “The only thing from Russia that is reliable is the lies.”Even the markets seemed to take the latest disruption in stride. After rising 5 percent on the heels of Gazprom’s announcement, prices are now lower than they were at the start of last week.That does not mean that European nations are not feeling the pain, or have skirted the risk that the energy crunch could sow social unrest, fracturing their unity against the Kremlin this winter. But a lot of the damage has already been done, with gas prices several times above anything that would be considered normal and pressure mounting on consumers and businesses.The question remains, then, of just how successful the hard pivot from Russian energy actually is — whether Europe has lined up enough new sources, whether its stockpiles can get it through the winter, whether conservation efforts can make a difference and whether governments can help shield consumers from rising prices.“The only thing from Russia that is reliable is the lies,” said Robert Habeck, right, Germany’s economy minister, with Chancellor Olaf Schulz, center, and Christian Lindner, the finance minister.Tobias Schwarz/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesRussian officials are watching and waiting for what they believe is the inevitable collapse of European resolve as the economic pain bites.“I think that the coming winter will show how real their belief is in the possibility of refusing Russian gas,” the Russian energy minister, Nikolai Shulginov, said in an interview with the Russian state-run news agency Tass. “This will be a completely new life for the Europeans. I think that, most likely, they will not be able to refuse.”Russian state news outlets are full of reports of protests in Europe. Italians, Russian state media reported, are being told to boil their pasta for just two minutes before turning off the heat, while Germans are forgoing showers.The message: Sooner or later, the Europeans’ unity against Russia will crumble under the weight of high gas prices, while Russia’s standing has been elevated.“We have not lost anything and will not lose anything,” Mr. Putin said on Wednesday.But increasingly, Europe’s leaders are signaling that, having spent months preparing for this moment, they are ready for the showdown.“Now our work is paying off!” the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Wednesday in Brussels. “At the beginning of the war, Russia’s pipeline gas was 40 percent of all imported gas. Today it is now down to only 9 percent of our gas imports.”That is because European leaders — especially those from Italy and Germany, which rely most on Russian energy — have crisscrossed the globe. From Algeria to Qatar, Senegal, Congo and Canada, they have been negotiating deals to replace Russian supplies.Gazprom’s Orenburg gas processing plant in Russia. Steep energy prices netted the company $41.75 billion profit in the first half of the year — $10 billion of which went to the Kremlin.Alexander Manzyuk/ReutersGermany has also leaned heavily on Norway and the Netherlands, which agreed to extend the life of its biggest gas field to combat the energy crisis.As a result, Germany’s dependency on cheap Russian gas — once more than half its overall gas imports — decreased to less than 10 percent in August.In Italy, consumption from Moscow has dropped to 23 percent from 40 percent.Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany and other European leaders are defiantly claiming the end of an era.For decades, dating to the days of the Soviet Union, Moscow had insisted to Germany and others that it was a reliable energy partner, no matter the political context. But now, European leaders say, Mr. Putin has shattered that understanding.“Something that held true throughout the Cold War no longer applies,” Mr. Scholz said last weekend. “Russia is no longer a reliable energy supplier. That is part of the new reality.”That new reality, perhaps, should not have come as such a shock. Mr. Putin’s gas brinkmanship dates to 2004, when Gazprom cut deliveries to Belarus, in a battle for control of a transit pipeline into Western Europe.In 2009, as Ukraine sought NATO membership under a pro-Western president, Mr. Putin ordered a sharp reduction in gas flows through the country; after Ukraine elected a pro-Russian president a year later, the Kremlin rewarded him with a 30 percent cut in natural gas prices.And even before Russia invaded Ukraine, it reduced exports in the summer of 2021, and did not refill Gazprom-owned storage sites in Europe.A compressor station near the German-Polish border for Russian gas through the Yamal-Europe pipeline.Filip Singer/EPA, via ShutterstockSergey Vakulenko, an analyst in Bonn, Germany, who worked for years in Russia’s energy industry, said that over the last two decades Russian officials had seen the geopolitical power that the United States derived from its influence over the global financial system, and sought to harness Russia’s status as a major energy exporter in a similar way.“There was a great desire, as a superpower, to have something similar,” he said. “There was the feeling that oil and gas was the answer.”Yet Russia’s cuts in gas exports to Europe since its invasion of Ukraine are of a different order of magnitude. “This is now just blackmail,” said Mikhail Krutikhin, a Russian energy analyst. “We haven’t seen it on this scale before.”In going so far, Mr. Putin has also invited greater risks. An internal Russian government economic forecast described this week by Bloomberg News estimated that a full cutoff of gas to Europe would cost as much as $6.6 billion in lost tax revenues.But with Gazprom netting a record profit of $41.75 billion in the first half of the year — $10 billion of which it passed on to the Kremlin — that is a cost Mr. Putin has calculated to be acceptable.For Russia, oil is the biggest revenue source, and Mr. Putin may be keen to use gas as a political weapon while he can, said Thomas O’Donnell, an energy expert at the Hertie School, a public policy school in Berlin.“This is where he’s got his biggest leverage to cause the most trouble in the European Union,” Mr. O’Donnell said. He added, “It’s a lever that he knows he’s going to lose in a year — or even maybe after this winter.”And a lot may depend on the severity of the winter. Even if liquid natural gas imports to Europe from other sources continue at their record high rate, a study released this week by the research institute Bruegel estimated that a complete stop to Russian supplies would require all of Europe to cut its consumption by 15 percent.European nations that used to rely on Russian gas imports for big chunks of their domestic energy production have been racing to fill gas storage facilities. Germany’s are now at 86 percent capacity, Italy’s at almost 84 percent.In Germany, large industry players have so far managed to drop their consumption by around 20 percent. A similar amount would have to be shaved off household usage, according to German energy and economy ministry models, should Russian gas remain shut off. If households don’t cut back, Germany’s gas regulator has repeatedly warned, the option could be rationing.Lights switched off in apartments in Frankfurt. German energy officials have repeatedly warned that households must conserve energy or face rationing.Michael Probst/Associated PressEurope is aiming to have enough liquid natural gas solutions in place by next year. Germany recently signed a deal for a fifth floating L.N.G. terminal, while terminals in Belgium, France and the Netherlands are fully booked.The key to surviving this winter in the face of a Nord Stream shutdown will be how well European states work together.So far, only Hungary has signed a deal for additional supplies with Gazprom.France and Germany, in contrast, agreed this week that Paris would send any excess gas to Germany, where it is badly needed, and in return Berlin promised to send its extra electricity.The tricky issue will be what happens should more critical German industry have to cut back, and voters begin to insist supplies not be diverted to neighbors — like the Czech Republic, where 70,000 people already came out in protest of soaring prices. It is a challenge many European leaders may face this winter, warned Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister.“That will be the central question that will really put us to the test in the coming months,” Ms. Baerbock said, at a meeting of German ambassadors in Berlin this week. “Will we be able to secure our energy supply for all people in Europe together in solidarity, or not?”Gaia Pianigiani More

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    Price Cap on Russian Oil Wins Backing of G7 Ministers

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    The proposal aims to stabilize unsettled energy markets in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But it faces considerable obstacles.WASHINGTON — Top officials from the world’s leading advanced economies agreed on Friday to move ahead with a plan to cap the price of Russian oil, accelerating an ambitious effort to limit how much money Russia can earn from each barrel of crude it sells on the global market.Finance ministers from the Group of 7 nations said they were firming up details of a price cap, with the aim of both depressing the price of global oil and reducing critical revenue that President Vladimir V. Putin is relying on to finance Russia’s war effort in Ukraine. The untested plan has been pushed by the Biden administration as way of keeping sanctions pressure on Russia while minimizing the impact on a global economy that has been saddled with soaring energy and food prices this year.Hours after the G7 ministers announced their plan on Friday, Gazprom, the Russian-owned energy giant, said it would postpone restarting the flow of natural gas through a closely watched pipeline that connects Russia to Germany, known as Nord Stream 1. The unexpected delay was attributed to mechanical problems with the pipeline, but it raised concerns that it was in retaliation for the price cap, an idea that Moscow has condemned.Eric Mamer, a spokesman for the European Commission, said that the “fallacious pretenses” for the latest delay were “proof of Russia’s cynicism.”The price cap still has many hurdles to clear before it can take effect, but its goal is to keep Russian oil flowing to global markets that depend on those supplies, while substantially reducing the profit Moscow reaps from its sales. Europe still consumes nearly two million barrels of Russian oil a day, though its imports have fallen since the war began, and the European Union is preparing to wean itself off those supplies by the end of the year.Officials are racing to put the price-cap plan in place by early December to try to limit the economic fallout from the new E.U. sanctions. They would ban nearly all Russian oil imports to the European Union and block the insurance and financing of Russian oil shipments.The Biden administration has become concerned that those moves could send energy prices skyrocketing and potentially tip the global economy into a recession if millions of barrels of Russian oil were suddenly yanked off the global market, drastically reducing the world’s supply of crude. U.S. administration officials have estimated that oil could soar to $200 a barrel or higher unless efforts to impose the price cap are successful.The initiative is a novel attempt to blunt the global economic impact of the invasion. Oil prices rose as fears of confrontation grew a year ago, and spiked when Russian troops entered Ukraine in February. They have receded in recent months, in part because much of Europe has tipped into recession, reducing global oil demand.Whether the price cap can work will hinge on a variety of factors, including securing agreement by all 27 E.U. member states and determining how the actual price would be set. Maritime insurers, which are critical to making the plan work, would also have to figure out how to comply in a way that allows them to continue insuring Russian oil cargo without running afoul of sanctions.The industry, which would be responsible for making sure that oil buyers and sellers were honoring the price cap, has warned that insurers lack the capacity to police the transactions. Financial services in Europe undergird international energy shipments around the world, and fully blocking their ability to deal with Russian oil could disrupt exports globally, even to countries that have not adopted Russian oil embargoes.The G7 finance ministers said in their statement that they intended to use a “record-keeping and attestation model” to track of whether oil transactions were below the price ceiling, and that they would try to minimize the administrative burden on insurers.A tanker at a crude oil terminal near Nakhodka. Maritime insurers would have to figure out how to comply with a cap in a way that allows them to continue covering Russian oil cargo.Tatiana Meel/ReutersRachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said the agreement unveiled on Friday raised more questions than answers and suggested a challenging path ahead.“This sounds like something that is very technical and technocratic that is going to be hard to monitor and fully enforce,” Ms. Ziemba said.Understand the Decline in U.S. Gas PricesCard 1 of 5Understand the Decline in U.S. Gas PricesGas prices are falling. More

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    Portugal Could Hold an Answer for a Europe Captive to Russian Gas

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    Portugal has no coal mines, oil wells or gas fields. Its impressive hydropower production has been crippled this year by drought. And its long-running disconnect from the rest of Europe’s energy network has earned the country its status as an “energy island.”Yet with Russia withholding natural gas from countries opposed to its invasion of Ukraine, the tiny coastal nation of Portugal is suddenly poised to play a critical role in managing Europe’s looming energy crisis.For years, the Iberian Peninsula was cut off from the web of pipelines and huge supply of cheap Russian gas that power much of Europe. And so Portugal and Spain were compelled to invest heavily in renewable sources of energy like wind, solar and hydropower, and to establish an elaborate system for importing gas from North and West Africa, the United States, and elsewhere.Now, access to these alternate energy sources has taken on new significance. The changed circumstances are shifting the power balances among the 27 members of the European Union, creating opportunities as well as political tensions as the bloc seeks to counter Russia’s energy blackmail, manage the transition to renewables and determine infrastructure investments.The Alto Tamega dam, part of a hydropower facility in northern Portugal that will be operational in 2024.Matilde Viegas for The New York TimesThe urgency of Europe’s task is on display this week. On Wednesday, Russia’s energy monopoly, Gazprom, again suspended already reduced gas deliveries to Germany through its Nord Stream 1 pipeline. With natural gas costing about 10 times what it did a year ago, the European Union has called for an emergency meeting of its energy ministers next week.As Brussels tries to figure out how to manage the crisis, the possibility of funneling more gas to Europe through Portugal and Spain is gaining attention.Portugal and Spain were among the first European nations to build the kind of processing terminals needed to accept boatloads of natural gas in liquefied form and to convert it back into the vapor that could be piped into homes and businesses.This imported liquefied natural gas, or L.N.G., was more expensive than the type much of Europe piped in from Russia. But now that Germany, Italy, Finland and other European nations are frantically seeking to replace Russian gas with substitutes shipped by sea from the United States, North Africa and the Middle East, this disadvantage is an advantage.Solar panels in Sintra. Connecting such panels to Europe’s electricity grid could help ease energy shortages on the continent.Matilde Viegas for The New York TimesTogether, Spain and Portugal account for one-third of Europe’s capacity to process L.N.G. Spain has the most terminals and the biggest, though Portugal has the most strategically located.Its terminal in Sines is the closest of any in Europe to the United States and the Panama Canal; it was the first port in Europe to receive L.N.G. from the United States, in 2016. Even before the war in Ukraine, Washington identified it as a strategically important gateway for energy imports to the rest of Europe.Spain also has an extensive network of pipelines that carry natural gas from Algeria and Nigeria, as well as large storage facilities.Understand the Decline in U.S. Gas PricesCard 1 of 5Understand the Decline in U.S. Gas PricesGas prices are falling. More