Wintershall

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Wintershall Holding GmbH

logo
legal form GmbH
founding 1894
resolution 2019
Reason for dissolution Merger with DEA to form Wintershall Dea GmbH
Seat Kassel , Germany
management Mario Mehren ( Managing Director )
Hans-Ulrich Engel ( Chairman of the Supervisory Board )
Number of employees 2000
sales 5.930 billion euros (2019)
Branch Oil and gas
Website www.wintershall.de
Status: 2019

Wintershall headquarters in Kassel

The Wintershall Holding GmbH , based in Kassel was the largest producer of crude oil and natural gas in Germany . It was a wholly-owned subsidiary of BASF . The company was active in the exploration and production of oil and gas in Europe , North Africa , South America as well as in Russia and the Middle East . Wintershall had more than 2,000 employees worldwide. In fiscal 2018, oil and gas production was around 171 million barrels of oil equivalent (BOE). The proceeds amounted to 4.1 billion euros.

In May 2019, Wintershall merged with DEA to form Wintershall Dea . BASF holds 67% of the shares in the joint venture.

history

The early years

Wintershall was founded on February 13, 1894 by the mining entrepreneur Carl Julius Winter and the industrialist Heinrich Grimberg. Originally the company was a drilling company for the extraction of potash salt in Kamen . The name Wintershall (pronounced: Winters hall) is made up of the surname of Carl Julius Winter and the Old High German word for salt (Hall, cf. Halit , Halurgie).

On April 23, 1900, the groundbreaking ceremony for the sinking of the Grimberg shaft near Widdershausen took place , and the first Wintershall potash plant was built in Heringen . Wintershall sank additional shafts in the Werra potash district, and built and acquired additional plants in the region. From 1895 to 1913, seven potash shafts in Hesse and 21 in Thuringia were sunk in the Werra Valley .

From 1930 onwards, Wintershall added crude oil production as a field of activity, as the accidental leakage of crude oil in one of the potash shafts in Volkenroda proved to be a future-oriented perspective for Wintershall. The increasing motorization as well as the later onset of military armament made crude oil a popular product. From then on, Wintershall therefore concentrated on the development of oil wells.

The Nazi era

Wintershall benefited greatly from the expropriations in the era of National Socialism and the use of forced laborers and prisoners of the concentration camps and the political commitment August Rostergs , the company from the First World War to the end of World War II led.

Rosterg maintained close connections with the NSDAP elite and met the Reichsführer of the SS Heinrich Himmler personally on numerous occasions. The American military government saw Rosterg, who was a member of the " Freundeskreis Himmler ", as "the leading industrialist of the National Socialist regime". Under his leadership, Wintershall became fully part of the Nazi system and worked with a view to its goals. Wintershall took over Naphthaindustrie und Tankanlagen AG (NITAG) in the 1930s and renamed it NITAG Deutsche Treibstoffe AG in 1938 . At that time, NITAG was already " Aryanized ", as the Jewish Kahan family no longer owned any shares by 1932 at the latest. As a result, NITAG became the most important sales subsidiary alongside Mihag , Wiesöl and Wintershall Mineralöl GmbH .

During the Second World War, forced labor was increasingly used. The prisoners from the Buchenwald concentration camp had to work at the Wintershall plant in Lützkendorf .

post war period

In the post-war period, due to expropriation in the Soviet occupation zone , Wintershall lost a large oil refinery in Lützkendorf, some of its NITAG filling stations and the potassium pits and works in Thuringia. In 1951, Wintershall made its first natural gas discovery in northern Germany.

After the securities adjustment in 1949/1950, Wintershall and DEA took over the majority of shares in Deutsche Gasolin AG in 1952 in connection with the construction of the Emsland oil refinery . In 1956, the Wintershall subsidiary NITAG merged with Gasolin AG to form Deutsche Gasolin Nitag AG. Wintershall then became a co-owner of Aral by contributing its shares in NITAG and Gasolin . In 1965 Wintershall took over the Preussag shares in the Buggingen potash salt mine .

Takeover by BASF

In 1969, the BASF Group took over Wintershall as an important supplier of raw materials and as part of the resource security for BASF. Potash mining was incorporated into Kali und Salz AG in 1970 . Since then, the company has concentrated on the natural gas and oil sectors. In 1971 the Wintershall subsidiary Gasolin merged with its sister company Aral.

In 1987, Wintershall began operating the Mittelplate drilling rig on the edge of the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea National Park as part of a 50/50 joint venture with DEA . Up to the present time, over 35 million tons of crude oil have been produced on the relatively small production island, measuring 70 × 95 meters. The Mittelplate offshore oil field accounts for 55% of German oil production.

Until the merger

Wintershall has been increasingly involved in natural gas trading since the 1990s. In autumn 1990 an agreement was reached with the Russian producer Gazprom to market Russian natural gas in Germany. The cooperation between companies from the Russian and German energy industries according to the "Gas Industry Cooperation Agreement" was agreed shortly before German reunification . Wingas was founded in 1993 as a joint venture between Wintershall and Gazprom. Due to the European unbundling regulations, network operation and storage had to be split off from natural gas trading and transferred to separate companies. In 2010 the new Wingas (only natural gas trading) and Wingas Transport were founded . As a result of the exchange of company stakes between BASF and Gazprom, the new Wingas, and with it Wintershall's natural gas trading, was completely transferred to Russian ownership in 2015. At the same time, the remaining company Wingas Transport was renamed Gascade in 2012 . Gascade is part of the joint venture WIGA Transport Beteiligungs-GmbH & Co. KG (WIGA) of Wintershall Holding and PAO Gazprom. Wintershall Dea is also co-owner (15.5%) of Gazprom's Nord Stream pipeline , which is used to transport natural gas from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea . Nord Stream was inaugurated on November 8, 2011. In summer 2015, Wintershall and five other companies signed a letter of intent to build the capacity expansion of the Nord Stream pipeline. The company Nord Stream 2 AG was founded for this purpose . As a result of legal orders, Gazprom became the sole shareholder. The other initiators ENGIE , OMV , Shell , Uniper and Wintershall are acting as financial investors in the project. On October 30, 2019, Denmark was the last country bordering the Baltic Sea to issue a building permit. In mid-November 2019, only 290 of the total length of 1,230 kilometers had to be completed.

Merger with DEA ​​AG

A binding agreement to merge DEA and Wintershall was announced on September 27, 2018. The merger took place with official approval in May 2019. The result was the leading independent gas and oil company in Europe. BASF holds 67% of Wintershall Dea and LetterOne holds 33% of the ordinary shares in Wintershall Dea. Taking into account the value of Wintershall Dea's midstream business, BASF also received preferred shares , according to which BASF's current total stake is 72.7% of the company's total share capital. The preferred shares will be converted into common shares on May 1, 2022 or in the course of a possible earlier IPO.

Corporate structure

Wintershall had production sites in Germany, the North Sea, Argentina , North Africa, the Middle East and Russia.

In 2010 Wintershall Holding AG was converted into Wintershall Holding GmbH .

For the 2015 financial year, Wintershall's sales amounted to over EUR 12.99 billion, a decrease compared to the previous year's result of around EUR 15.14 billion. The company's profit amounted to 1.05 billion euros (2014: 1.46 billion euros). Oil and gas production increased by 17 million barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) to 153 million BOE in 2015 compared to the previous year. About 75% of this was accounted for by natural gas production.

literature

  • Klag, ND: The liberalization of the gas market in Germany . Tectum Verlag DE, 2003.
  • De Brabandere, E .; Gazzini, T .: Foreign Investment in the Energy Sector: Balancing Private and Public Interests. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, June 6, 2014.

Web links

Commons : Wintershall  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Key figures for the German oil and gas producer Wintershall Dea in 2019. In: Statista. Retrieved August 4, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Wintershall Dea. (PDF) Wintershall Dea, accessed on June 9, 2020 .
  3. ↑ 125 years of Wintershall: The company's history began with salt. February 20, 2019, accessed June 9, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Wintershall Dea - History. Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Bernd Koch: The beginnings - Widdershausen current project. Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  6. ^ Klag, ND: The liberalization of the gas market in Germany . Tectum Verlag DE, 2003, p. 172.
  7. ^ A b Hermannus Pfeiffer: Wintershall's brown past (new Germany). Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Memories on the net: NITAG, a German mineral oil company owned by Wintershall with its own chain of petrol stations, also in Kassel. Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  9. ↑ a b Memories online: NITAG, a German mineral oil company owned by Wintershall with its own chain of petrol stations, also in Kassel. Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  10. ↑ DER SPIEGEL | Online news. Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  11. ↑ The companies that do not want to compensate . In: The daily newspaper: taz . November 18, 1999, ISSN  0931-9085 , p. 2 ( taz.de [accessed June 9, 2020]).
  12. ↑ Deep brown economy. January 7, 2020, accessed June 9, 2020 .
  13. ↑ 125 years of Wintershall. Ready for the next chapter: German Geological Society - Geological Association. Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  14. ↑ Wintershall - historic old stocks. Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  15. ↑ Chronicle. Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  16. ↑ Aggressive expansion. In: The time . May 2, 1969, Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  17. ↑ BASF separates from K + S share. March 11, 2011, accessed June 9, 2020 .
  18. ↑ - German Gasolin. Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  19. ↑ StackPath. Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  20. ^ Reimar Paul: Oil drilling plans in the Wadden Sea: Millions under the silt. In: The daily newspaper. October 27, 2019, accessed June 9, 2020 .
  21. ↑ Safe and environmentally friendly oil production in the Wadden Sea. In: BVEG. Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  22. ^ The pioneering days of the Russian-German natural gas industry. In: www.euractiv.de. November 22, 2010, accessed June 9, 2020 .
  23. ↑ Gazprom exchanges Wingas tip. Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  24. ↑ Company & History - WINGAS GmbH. Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  25. ↑ Wingas Transport is now called Gascade. Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  26. ↑ De Brabandere, E .; Gazzini, T .: "Foreign Investment in the Energy Sector: Balancing Private and Public Interests", Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, June 6, 2014, p. 106.
  27. ↑ BASF and Gazprom sign letter of intent to expand the Nord Stream pipeline. Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  28. ↑ Nord Stream 2 clears major hurdle as Denmark OKs gas pipeline . In: Reuters . October 30, 2019 ( reuters.com [accessed June 9, 2020]).
  29. ↑ Subscribe to read. In: Financial Times. Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  30. ↑ Nord Stream 2: The Eternal Apple of Strife. In: Deutsche Welle. November 18, 2019, accessed June 9, 2020 .
  31. ↑ Wintershall confirms signed memorandum of understanding with Iran . In: Reuters . April 12, 2016 ( reuters.com [accessed June 9, 2020]).
  32. ^ Wintershall, DEA complete merger. Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  33. ↑ Chemical industry: merger of BASF subsidiary Wintershall and Dea completed. Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  34. ^ LetterOne and BASF merge businesses to create Wintershall Dea. Retrieved May 1, 2019, June 9, 2020 (UK English).
  35. ^ BASF, LetterOne complete merger of oil and gas operations. May 13, 2019, accessed June 9, 2020 .
  36. ↑ Annual Report 2019. Wintershall Dea, accessed on June 9, 2020 .
  37. ↑ Wintershall is making profits despite low raw material prices. October 16, 2017, accessed June 9, 2020 .
  38. ^ Wintershall Dea GmbH, Celle. Retrieved June 9, 2020 .
  39. ↑ Newsroom. In: Wintershall. Wintershall, accessed on June 9, 2020 .