VNG AG
| VNG AG
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|---|---|
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| legal form | Corporation |
| founding | June 29, 1990 |
| Seat | Leipzig , Germany |
| management |
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| Number of employees | 1,155 (Dec. 2019, VNG Group) |
| sales | € 10.5 billion (2019, VNG Group) |
| Branch | energy |
| Website | www.vng.de |
The VNG AG , based in Leipzig is a European active gas trading company, with the divisions gas trading and sales, gas transportation and gas storage. Together with its subsidiaries, VNG supplies municipal utilities, regional suppliers and industrial companies with natural gas in Germany, Italy, Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic. The company is majority owned by EnBW .
history
VNG was founded on June 29, 1990, two days before the German-German economic and monetary union came into force , as a public limited company under private law. The first forerunners emerged as early as 1958 in the “ VVB Verbundwirtschaft” as “ VEB Verbundnetz Ost”, “West” and “Mitte”. In July of the same year VEB Verbundnetz West formed the technical line for long-distance gas. In 1963 the three Verbundnetz companies merged to form a VEB Verbundnetz Berlin. In January 1969 the VEB Verbundnetz Gas was created. This purely technical operation ensured the supply of the population in the first few years exclusively with town gas . This was mainly generated from domestic brown coal by means of coal gasification . With the start of Russian natural gas deliveries in May 1973, VEB Verbundnetz Gas also took over its distribution and storage. The Russian imported natural gas was three times more efficient and environmentally friendly than the town gas that had been used exclusively until then. However, the GDR mainly used this valuable raw material for industry, because the deliveries had to be paid for in foreign currency and payments in kind. By 1989 the GDR increased the amount imported to an annual seven billion cubic meters. By the end of 1989, 2% of East German households were supplied with natural gas.
VNG was the first large company in Eastern Germany to be successfully privatized by the Treuhandanstalt . Klaus-Ewald Holst , who had been an engineer in VEB Verbundnetz Gas since 1968, played a decisive role in this . The first shareholders were Essener Ruhrgas AG (later E.ON Ruhrgas ) with a stake of 35% and BEB Brigitta Erdgas und Erdöl GmbH , Hanover, with 10% . The remaining shares initially remained with the Treuhandanstalt. In the summer of 1991 the remaining shares were sold, thus completing the privatization . In addition to Ruhrgas and BEB, there are Wintershall (15%), 14 East German cities and municipal companies (together 15%) as well as British Gas , French ELF , Russian Gazprom , Norwegian Statoil and East German gas producer Erdöl- Natural gas Gommern .
In the course of German reunification , the company was faced with the task of converting East German households from city gas to natural gas, diversifying gas supplies, expanding the pipelines and connecting them to the European natural gas transport system. The sale of natural gas to industrial customers and municipal utilities was also restructured. In VNG AG's first business year 1990/91, the gas importer built 250 km of pipelines and converted 600 km of town gas pipelines to natural gas. In June 1995, the conversion of East Germany from urban to natural gas was completed in Leipzig. By 1995, VNG invested around 767 million euros in converting around 6,100 km of high-pressure pipelines from city gas to natural gas as well as in building around 700 km of pipelines and increasing the storage capacity of their underground storage facilities . In September 1992 the VNG network was connected to the West German and thus West European natural gas network. One year later, VNG signed a long-term gas supply contract for Norwegian natural gas. This also removed the one-sided dependence on Russian natural gas.
From the mid-1990s, VNG increasingly advocated the use of natural gas as a fuel. In September 1996, it financed Saxony's first public natural gas filling station in Leipzig. In 2001 it presented itself for the first time together with automobile manufacturers and companies in the gas industry with a joint stand at the international automobile fair AMI in Leipzig. The company has a fleet of 150 vehicles that run on natural gas . VNG is also the initiator of the regional initiative groups for natural gas as a fuel (IEK) and is the chairman of the IEK at federal level. In the mid-1990s, VNG began to orientate itself internationally and to look for new partners abroad. The eastern neighbors of Germany initially formed a focus. In addition to its investments in Poland , the Czech Republic and Slovakia , VNG also has interests in companies in Austria, Italy and Norway. In 2006 VNG founded a subsidiary in Norway. VNG Norge, based in Stavanger, is responsible for the upstream activities, i. that is, it participates in the exploration and production of natural gas from the North Sea . At the beginning of 2013, a consortium in which VNG Norge has a 20% stake found an oil field off the coast of Norway with a size of 30 to 100 million barrels of oil equivalent.
In bioenergy range VNG is also active and in 2006 founded the modern bio natural gas subsidiary BALANCE Renewables GmbH. This is primarily intended to promote projects to feed bio natural gas into the natural gas pipeline network. From 2016, bio natural gas will be sold to VNG customers via the trading company bmp greengas GmbH.
In January 2009 EWE announced that EnBW would buy its stake in VNG; this was agreed upon when EnBW joined EWE and the necessary antitrust clearance by the Federal Cartel Office was granted subject to conditions in August 2009. The planned sale of EWE's stake in EnBW failed in December 2011 after the other shareholders refused to give their necessary approval . In February 2012, the Russian energy company Gazprom acquired the shares in the French energy company GDF Suez, which means that from then on it held a total of 10.52% of VNG. In 2014, EWE took over Wintershall's stake in VNG. In July 2015, Gazprom sold its shares in EWE.
In 2013, VNG took over goldgas GmbH and goldgas SL GmbH, both based in Eschborn, active nationwide in the supply of standard load profile customers with natural gas and in the supply of electricity.
In 2013, VNG purchased a total of around 365 TWh of natural gas, including 64.8 TWh from Russia, 42.8 TWh from Norway and 10.6 TWh from Germany from gas supply contracts. 246.5 TWh were purchased via spot and futures markets.
In 2014, natural gas deliveries amounted to around 310 TWh (368 TWh VNG Group).
Gas pipeline network
As an independent transmission system operator within the VNG Group, Ontras Gastransport GmbH provides the second largest German gas transmission network with a length of more than 7,500 kilometers, which guarantees a secure gas supply in conjunction with European gas transmission networks and numerous distribution networks as well as gas storage facilities. The pipeline network runs through the federal states of Saxony , Saxony-Anhalt , Thuringia , Brandenburg / Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania . As part of the 3rd EU internal energy market package, Ontras was completely unbundled and since then has also been responsible for the operation and maintenance of the networks and systems. ONTRAS also operates a storage facility at the Burggraf-Bernsdorf site as a network buffer with a working gas volume of 3 million m³ (Vn) and a plateau extraction rate of 40 m³ / h.
The ONTRAS network is part of the GASPOOL market area and is operated by Gaspool Balancing Services GmbH based in Berlin, an ONTRAS affiliate together with Nowega in Münster, Gasunie Deutschland Transport Services GmbH (GTG) in Hanover and Gascade Gastransport GmbH in Kassel operated. The GASPOOL market area connects around 400 gas networks.
Storage
As part of the implementation of the 3rd EU internal energy market package, the storage business of VNG was transferred to VNG Gasspeicher GmbH with effect from January 2, 2012. The storage company currently has a working gas volume of around 2.2 billion m³ or 24.5664 TWh at its four underground gas storage facilities in Bad Lauchstädt , Bernburg (Saale) , Etzel and Kirchheilingen . VNG Gasspeicher is the third largest storage operator in Germany.
In Germany there are a total of 50 natural gas storage facilities with a storage volume of around 24.2 billion standard cubic meters . This can store a volume of gas corresponding to around 28% of Germany's annual natural gas consumption (2015: 85 billion cubic meters).
trade
As a subsidiary of EnBW, VNG AG was fully consolidated in the EnBW Group in the second quarter of 2017 and is therefore itself a subsidiary of a vertically integrated company within the meaning of the Energy Industry Act (EnWG). According to Section 10b (3) EnWG, those subsidiaries that generate, gain or sell energy to customers may not own shares in a transport network operator, either directly or indirectly. In order to implement the requirements of the EnWG, VNG AG outsourced its wholesale business to VNG Handel & Vertrieb GmbH as an independent company with effect from April 3, 2018.
Shareholders
| VNG shareholders (as of December 31, 2019) | Shares in% |
|---|---|
| EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG , Karlsruhe | 74.21 |
| VNG Verbundnetz Gas Verwaltungs- und Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Leipzig | 21.58
Leipzig 7.46%, Dresden 6.47%, |
| OEW Energie-Beteiligungs GmbH, Ravensburg | 4.21 |
Holdings
- 25.33% caplog-x GmbH, Leipzig,
- 24.60% MITGAS Central German gas supply, Halle
- 23.38% Stadt- und Überlandwerke GmbH Luckau-Lübbenau, Luckau
- 12.55% Stadtwerke Rostock AG, Rostock.
Web links
literature
- Energy companies are reaching their limits . In: Die Welt, issue 145, June 25, 2007, p. 22
- Germany's Big 500: The WELT ranking of the German economy . In: Die Welt, issue 145, June 25, 2007, p. 20
- Eastern corporations are growing particularly quickly . In: Die Welt, issue 256, November 2, 2007, p. 12
- EU wants to clamp the veins of utilities . www.handelsblatt.com, January 10, 2007
- VNG Annual Report 2008
- Investments in gas storage are increasing significantly . www.bdew.de, May 15, 2009
Individual evidence
- ↑ About the company. (No longer available online.) December 5, 2014, archived from the original on July 31, 2016 ; accessed on July 31, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Handelsblatt dated February 6, 2013
- ↑ Tagesspiegel Online from September 28, 2015 ( Memento of the original from December 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Russian Gazprom may increase VNG
- ↑ Wintershall concludes sale of VNG shares to EWE ( Memento of the original from April 19, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ EWE takes over shares in Leipzig's VNG from Gazprom
- ↑ Annual Report 2014 (PDF; 2.7 MB)
- ↑ Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE), overview of gas storage facilities in Europe
- ↑ Underground gas storage in Germany. In: ERDÖL ERDGAS KOHLE, 133 vol. 2017 issue 11, p. 409, pdf, 562 kB, accessed on October 17, 2018
- ↑ About the company. (No longer available online.) December 5, 2014, archived from the original on July 31, 2016 ; accessed on July 31, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Nine municipal companies form the VUB
