With the crisis in Ukraine and the disruption of supplies from Russia, Germany wants to secure its gas imports. The country has decided to nationalize the gas giant Uniper, which is one of its main pillars for its supply. “The government is taking over approximately 99% of Uniper in total,” the German economy ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
The energy company is indeed Germany’s leading gas importer. It supplies hundreds of municipalities, or 40% of Germany’s gas supply, according to the Minister of the Economy.
According to Berlin, this nationalization plan, discussed for several weeks, “has become necessary” because the situation has “worsened dramatically” with the closure in early September of the Nordstream gas pipeline which links Russia to Germany.
This rise of the State in the capital replaces a first aid plan unveiled last July, which provided for Berlin to take a 30% stake in the Düsseldorf group. In total, all the aid measures announced since this summer for Uniper should cost Germany around 30 billion euros.
In detail, Germany will buy at a unit price of 1.70 euro all the shares of Uniper held by its main shareholder, the Finnish group Fortum, for a total of 500 million euros. Berlin will also carry out a capital increase of 8 billion euros, the government has also indicated. Finally, the agreement provides for the reimbursement, by Germany, of an 8 billion euro loan that Fortum had granted to its subsidiary Uniper.
Dreaded shortages for thousands of customers
Uniper is hit hard by the drastic reduction in Russian gas supplies following the outbreak of war in Ukraine. The company was the main customer of the Russian group Gazprom in Germany. It must now, to honor its contracts and deliver to its customers, obtain gas on the spot market where prices have exploded. In total, the losses incurred amount to “8.5 billion euros”, Fortum said.
However, Berlin has constantly warned in recent months about the “Lehman Brothers effect” that a bankruptcy of Uniper would have on the energy markets. Given the importance of Uniper, its fall would shake the energy market and cause shortages for thousands of customers.
The nationalization of Uniper recalls the emergency measures taken by Berlin during the financial crisis with the rescue of the second bank of the country, Commerzbank, via an entry into the capital, or more recently the acquisition of a stake in the airline giant Lufthansa during the pandemic. The State has since withdrawn from the capital of these two groups.
Already at the beginning of April, Berlin had to take control of the former German subsidiary of Gazprom, Gazprom Germania, to secure its supply, injecting aid of 9 to 10 billion euros. Last week, the state seized the activities of the oil giant Rosneft in Germany and promised a support plan for one of the main refineries in the country hitherto owned by this Russian group. All of these colossal expenditures should weigh down the country’s debt next year.