INTERVIEW: Wintershall looking for new projects in Russia

MOSCOW, Jun 5 (PRIME) -- Germany’s Wintershall is searching for new projects in Russia, Thilo Wieland, member of the company’s board of executive directors responsible for E&P in Russia, said in an interview with PRIME on Tuesday.

“We have 50% of our facilities in Russia including upstream operations, resources and financials, and we plan to retain the share in the future. Russia is the major and the most important asset in our operations. We work to find new projects to retain this share in our portfolio,” he said.

Wieland said that Wintershall plans to invest in development of the Yuzhno-Russkoye field in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District actively.

“We plan triple-digit investment in millions of euro in the project in the next few years. This is a large project and it is new for us. We reach new horizons, build new facilities, drill new wells,” he said.

“We keep in touch with our Russian partners, with Gazprom, to discuss new opportunities, new areas for cooperation. It is important for all these projects that we share competences, everyone brings in new knowledge to the project to move it to a new level… We share knowledge in upstream operations, in transportation of gas, and in digitalization.”

The executive sees the current political situation in Russia with Vladimir Putin being the president and many ministers retaining their positions in the new government as stable and positive for long-term business and making investment decisions.

“The new government will again support foreign investment, foreign partners’ investment in joint projects as judged by its first statements,” he said.

Wintershall focuses on upstream projects in Russia and does not plan to participate in downstream projects yet.

Wieland sees no sanctions impacting the Nord Stream-2 export gas pipeline and believes that there are too much politics around it.

“We debate the necessity of additional infrastructure in the future. But in early March we saw very low temperatures in Europe, gas prices jumped drastically. The only source able to ensure additional gas supplies was Russia. This is what I call investment in energy security of the E.U. which will rise after the Nord Stream-2 has been launched,” he said.

Wintershall invested 324 million euros in the project in 2017, and plans similar investment in 2018.

The Nord Stream-2 project envisages construction of two lines of a natural gas pipeline with an annual capacity of up to 55 billion cubic meters, running from the Russian shore to Germany under the Baltic Sea. Gazprom will implement the project together with its European partners – Shell, OMV, Engie, Uniper, and Wintershall.

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