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Uniper headquarters in Düsseldorf: "Significant financial damage"
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WOLFGANG RATTAY / REUTERS
The energy company Uniper, which is about to be nationalized, is trying to hold the Russian Gazprom group responsible for the lack of gas deliveries.
Uniper announced on Wednesday that arbitration proceedings had been requested against Gazprom Export before an international arbitral tribunal.
The reimbursement of the "considerable financial damage will be demanded," said CEO Klaus-Dieter Maubach.
So far, Uniper's costs for procurement of replacement gas have amounted to 11.6 billion euros.
The energy supplier Uniper supplies wholesale customers such as municipal utilities and industrial companies with electricity and gas.
Due to the lack of Russian energy supplies, the importer had to procure expensive replacements on the market in order to be able to meet their own supply contracts and therefore ran into financial difficulties.
The group, the German government, and Uniper's previous majority shareholder Fortum from Finland had agreed in September to nationalize Uniper.
The federal government should then own around 98.5 percent of the shares in Uniper.
Legal defeat in dispute over coal-fired power plants
Meanwhile, the group suffered a defeat in a legal dispute over the early shutdown of coal-fired power plants in the Netherlands.
Together with the RWE Group, Uniper had demanded compensation payments.
A court in The Hague ruled on Wednesday that the corporations are not entitled to compensation for lost profits.
The background to this is a law passed in 2019 that prohibits the use of coal to generate electricity from the beginning of 2030 at the latest due to climate protection.
Unlike in Germany, there is no compensation for this in the Netherlands.
The dispute has not yet been settled, as both companies rely on the international Energy Charter Treaty.
The decision of an international arbitral tribunal is expected in early 2023.
The Greens in the European Parliament had already demanded that the lawsuit be withdrawn.
Four coal-fired power plants are currently still in operation in the Netherlands, of which Uniper and RWE each own one.
Uniper's Maasvlakte plant started operations in 2016.
RWE opened its power plant in Eemshaven in 2015.
sol/dpa