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Vladimir Putin (on the Cologne carnival float): The trip to Russia is expensive for the BASF subsidiary Wintershall Dea
Photo: Rolf Vennenbernd / dpa
The end of its business in Russia caused the oil and gas company Wintershall Dea to lose billions in 2022.
In 2022 there was a minus of 4.8 billion euros after a profit of 593 million euros a year ago, as the company announced on Thursday.
Because of the withdrawal, Wintershall Dea had already announced a one-off expense of EUR 5.3 billion for the fourth quarter in January.
Operating profit, meanwhile, excluding the Russia segment rose to 5.9 billion euros from 3.1 billion a year earlier.
Including Russia, it was almost 7.7 billion.
Despite the war in Ukraine, the company had continued to do business in Russia and warned that if it withdrew, billions would fall to the Russian state.
Ultimately, Wintershall Dea was effectively expropriated, as Mehren had to admit in January.
Two billion euros in Russia "essentially gone"
Wintershall Dea has not received any dividends from Russia since the war.
Two billion euros have "basically disappeared," said Mehren.
"All liquidity is gone."
Meanwhile, the joint ventures in Russia are continuing production, CFO Paul Smith told Reuters.
"We stopped, but the joint ventures continue to produce."
The company now wants to grow outside of Russia, with Norway, Algeria, Argentina and Mexico already being targeted.
For the current year, Wintershall Dea is targeting production of 325,000 to 350,000 barrels of oil equivalent (boe) per day.
It was 321,000 boe in 2022 without Russia, including Russia the group came to 597,000 boe - both less than in 2021.
Wintershall Dea has had part of its Russian business secured by the federal government
The company now benefits from guarantees from the federal government, which the Federal Ministry of Economics assumed in the years 2006 to 2016.
According to information from the NDR, the federal guarantees also cover a number of political risks, including expropriation, nationalization, war and payment embargoes or suspensions.
Since Wintershall Dea already wrote off 5.4 billion euros on the Russian business in the fourth quarter of 2022 and the federal government is now expected to take over part of it, the taxpayer will have to pay billions to Wintershall Dea.
Wintershall-Dea's involvement in Russia, which is expensive for German taxpayers, goes back to a barter transaction in 2015.
At that time, among other things, the gas storage facility in Rehden, Lower Saxony, which at that time belonged jointly to BASF and Gazprom, went 100 percent to Gazprom.
In return, the BASF subsidiary Wintershall Dea was given the opportunity to produce gas in Siberia together with Gazprom.
Wintershall Dea was formed in 2019 from the merger of BASF subsidiary Wintershall and rival Dea.
BASF still holds 72.7 percent of the joint venture, the rest is held by the former Dea owner LetterOne.
Because of the war in Ukraine, Wintershall Dea recently continued to distance itself from its business in Russia.
The company was involved in three production projects at the Yuzhno Russkoye natural gas field and the Achimov formation of the Urengoy field in Siberia.
The share of the Russian business in the total production was recently 50 percent.
la/dpa-afx, Reuters
