Europe’s ability to compete against the US as a manufacturing centre is being damaged by rising energy costs as North America benefits from cheap natural shale gas, Germany’s biggest companies have warned. The energy cost advantage for US companies is rising and is expected to persist until at least 2020, according to the BDI, the German industry lobby group. German industrial companies such as Bayer and BASF are among the those alarmed over the gap. Some executives fear a growing divide between European and US energy costs could see energy-intensive manufacturers divert investments that might have gone into Europe to the US instead. --Gerrit Wiesman, Financial Times, 8 November 2012
