Why is this company significant?
BASF is the largest chemical manufacturer and producer in Europe, and most likely the largest in the world. Just one of their plants in Germany is 10 square kilometres. That's larger than most cities.
BASF produces chemicals used by virtually every industry in the world, to the world. In one way or another, it's a safe bet that almost everything you use and enjoy in your daily life exists because of BASF.
BASF is one of the largest producers of ammonia, if not the largest. Ammonia is critical for many industries and products and manufacturing, but specifically the manufacture and production of fertilizers.
Without modern fertilizers and modern production capabilities, the world starves. Literally.
At current farming capacities and capabilities, meaning current developed and producing farmland, if we lost modern farming industry capabilities, such as synthetic fertilizers, the global farming industry would only be able to support (feed) roughly 1 billion people. There are almost 8 billion people on the planet.
That's not taking into account harvesting, transportation, processing, packaging, distribution, etc. All of these require chemicals or products made or supplied by BASF, either directly or indirectly somewhere in the supply chain.
BASF itself has stated that they believe shutting down certain pieces of machinery, which haven't been shut down since they were brought online in the early 1960s, would result in catastrophic failure of the equipment itself and would permanently be offline.
BASF has also stated that they need 80% of the energy supplied by the Nord 1 pipeline to remain operational.
Both pipelines are now destroyed. Repairs will take YEARS, if ever.
Gas cannot be supplied in any adequate way by ship. Never mind the cost of that form of transportation or the environmental risk of transportation by ship and sea.
At this point, it is certain that BASF will cease operations. Probably within weeks. Especially as Europe is scrambling for energy sources to keep their people from freezing to death.
I don't know if this adequately describes the level of catastrophe we are facing, especially in Europe.
This was an act of war. And it was a death blow to Europe for sure, and will severely harm the US and most other nations.
https://www.businesslend.com/business/basf-to-downsize-permanently-in-europe/
H/t (The Red Pill)
Don't get me wrong, this IS bad, but not as bad as it's being made out here. BASF operates in virtually every major developed country on the planet. Outside of Germany, they have the second most plants here in the US. I think roughly 20-30% of their operations are here in the US.
But all is not as bad as it seems. Well, at least for those of us outside of Europe. Here in the US for example, BASF only makes up around 10-15% of our domestic chemical production. We don't really import much in terms of Ammonia and other fertilizer chemicals. Nor do we import much in terms of Chemicals in general. In the US (and North/South American in general really) Exxon and Chevron are king of the hill. Those two make up something like 80% of all petroleum product production (including petrochemicals like BASF) in the Western hemisphere.
So yeah, Europe is getting screwed big time, but the rest of the world isn't completely screwed quite yet.