Wingas
| Wingas
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|
|---|---|
 |
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| legal form | GmbH |
| founding | 1993 |
| Seat | Kassel , Germany |
| management | Peter Scherger |
| Number of employees | 350 (2018) |
| sales | EUR 12.59 billion (2014) |
| Website | www.wingas.com |
The Wingas GmbH (public image and self spelling WINGAS ), based in Kassel is one of the leading gas trading companies in Germany . Wingas has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Russian natural gas producer Gazprom since 2015 (with retroactive effect from April 1, 2013) . Its shares are held by WIBG GmbH (until August 2016: W & G Beteiligungs-GmbH & Co. KG), a subsidiary of GAZPROM Germania GmbH.
activities
Wingas was founded in 1993 by the BASF subsidiary Wintershall , the largest German oil and natural gas producer, and the Russian Gazprom for joint natural gas trading and sales. Wingas trades and sells natural gas to municipal utilities, regional suppliers, industrial companies and power plants in Germany and other European countries. As a European energy company, Wingas is active in Germany , Belgium , France , Great Britain , Austria , the Czech Republic , Denmark and the Netherlands . The market share in Germany in 2014 was 20 percent.
In addition to marketing natural gas, Wingas has been leasing free transmission capacities to national and international telecommunications companies since 1996. The fiber optic cables have been laid next to the natural gas network of the sister company Gascade . The fiber optic cable network currently extends over a length of 7,000 kilometers.
Unbundling
According to the requirements of the third liberalization package of the EU, which was implemented in national law through the amendment of the Energy Industry Act, the Wingas Group has been largely unbundled and restructured from 2010 with the outsourcing of the transport network and storage activities . In the course of this restructuring, the former Wingas GmbH & Co KG was converted into W & G Beteiligungs-GmbH & Co. KG (W&G) in 2012 and the entire gas trading and sales business of the group was transferred to the newly founded subsidiary Wingas GmbH.
Since 2012, W&G has been the parent company of the "new" Wingas. The storage business is run as a subsidiary of Wingas in a newly founded subsidiary, Astora GmbH & Co. KG .
Gas transport
Gascade (formerly Wingas Transport) has been responsible for the non-discriminatory operation of the long-distance gas network as an Independent Transmission Operator (ITO) since February 2012 .
The shares in the pipelines NEL (North German natural gas pipeline) and OPAL (Baltic Sea Pipeline Connection Line) are held directly by WIGA Transport Beteiligungs-GmbH & Co. KG.
Gas storage
Astora has been working for the storage business as a direct subsidiary of Wingas since February 2012. In Rehden , Lower Saxony , Astora has the largest underground natural gas storage facility in Western Europe - with a volume of 4.4 billion cubic meters of working gas. This corresponds to the annual requirement of two million single-family houses or about a fifth of the storage capacity for natural gas available in Germany. The Rehden storage facility is a former natural gas deposit, which was funded by Wintershall at the time. Astora has been operating one of the largest natural gas cavern storage facilities in Germany in Jemgum, Lower Saxony, since 2013 . The working gas volume will be up to 1 billion cubic meters by 2018. In May 2007, the Haidach natural gas storage facility near Straßwalchen in Salzburg with a storage volume of up to 1.2 billion cubic meters of natural gas was put into operation by Astora, Rohöl-Aufsuchungs AG (RAG) and Gazprom Export. By 2011, this storage facility, which is only connected to the German gas network, had been expanded to 2.6 billion cubic meters. It has also been connected to the Austrian gas network since 2014.
New company headquarters
Due to the strong growth, Wingas decided in 2013 to build a new company headquarters in downtown Kassel. In September 2015, the company moved from the previous premises at Wintershall's headquarters to the new building in Königstor .
Others
In December 2013, the EU Commission approved the complete takeover of Wingas by Gazprom , a state-affiliated Russian company. The final takeover should be completed in autumn 2014. On December 20, 2014, the share swap between BASF and Gazprom was canceled due to the current difficult political environment.
The partners then agreed on September 4, 2015 in Vladivostok and Ludwigshafen that the asset swap would take place after all. The share swap was completed on September 30, 2015.
Web links
- wingas.com - Official website of the Wingas
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Press BASF AG: BASF and Gazprom complete asset swap
- ↑ WINGAS at a glance . Wingas GmbH factsheet. Retrieved August 21, 2015.
- ↑ Website of the WINGAS fiber optic cable . Retrieved August 21, 2015.
- ↑ Astora website ( Memento of the original from August 5, 2013 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. . Retrieved August 21, 2015.
- ↑ 400 employees have moved into new Wingas headquarters , hna.de. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
- ↑ BASF subsidiary continues to rely on business in Russia , Handelsblatt.com. Retrieved August 21, 2015.
- ↑ Spiegel online on September 4, 2015: BASF and Gazprom seal billion deal
