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)
A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance - Portrait of an Age
That's what we're headed for if enough of the supply chain goes down -- a world where the grid is down permanently, or at least for decades, and where electric lights are gone along with everything else that runs on electricity or depends on something that does.
Restarting, fixing, or recreating the machines that make the machines that make the parts of the grid and everything else we're used to won't happen overnight. It won't be a push-button job -- it will be the work of lifetimes, especially since many of the people who know how to do such things will be gone.
The easy-to-grab foundations for industry (oil that literally oozes out of the ground, easily-mined near-the-surface iron and other metals and minerals needed for industry, among other things) are harder to come by now. Computer chips are made in staggeringly complex fabs that cost billions of dollars, and which rely on an intricate and sophisticated supply chain. Knowledge of HOW they're made (assuming it even survives) is nowhere near enough to actually GET chips manufactured. Etc.; go down a list of industries and imagine starting them up again after they've sat idle for years and the supply chains they require are as wrecked as everything else.
America was born in a world lit only by fire; commercially successful electric lighting was a century away. But people knew HOW to live in that world and had the tools and infrastructure appropriate to that world.
We don't.
So here's hoping it doesn't come to that point.