The gas supplier wants to focus more on green gases.
(Photo: dpa)
Dusseldorf The East German company VNG slipped deep into the red in 2022 because of the Russian gas supply stop. This was announced by the subsidiary of the energy group EnBW on Tuesday morning. Accordingly, the adjusted operating result (EBIT) fell to minus 205 million euros. In the previous year, VNG had made a profit of 225 million euros.
VNG was able to double its turnover to 36.2 billion euros. For the energy trader, however, this number is not very meaningful, it is mainly due to the sharp rise in gas prices.
The group supplies 400 municipal utilities and numerous industrial customers. VNG thus has a similar business model to the gas importer Uniper, which slipped into a deep crisis last year due to a lack of gas deliveries from Russia and had to be rescued by the state. There were no gas deliveries from Russia last year, but companies such as VNG and Uniper still had to continue to supply gas to customers and buy it at top prices.
VNG CEO Ulf Heitmüller said on Tuesday: “Due to the substitution of the Russian gas volumes that were no longer available, we had to bear extremely high replacement procurement costs in order to be able to continue to reliably supply our customers at the contractually agreed, significantly lower prices.”
At the end of last year, the company announced an equity increase of around EUR 850 million. The money came largely from the energy group EnBW, which holds more than 70 percent of the shares in VNG. Thanks to the stabilization measures, VNG was not nationalized like Uniper, said Heitmüller on Tuesday.
First introductory talks with Algeria on hydrogen
VNG intends to invest more in green gases in the future. This means biogas and hydrogen. Hans-Joachim Polk, VNG Board Member for Infrastructure and Technology, said on Tuesday about the latter: “Together with the Norwegian energy company Equinor, VNG is planning to produce hydrogen with low CO2 emissions in Rostock.” 2030, as well as ten percent of the total German forecast hydrogen demand.
In addition, VNG is working with the French energy company Total Eren to set up a green hydrogen supply partnership with Chile. It is about ammonia imports to Germany, from which hydrogen can then be obtained.
In addition, VNG is cooperating with the Algerian energy company Sonatrach in the field of long-term hydrogen and ammonia projects. However, this cooperation is still at a very early stage.
Polk explained that it was first necessary to clarify where exactly the necessary renewable energy could be generated and where the hydrogen could be produced. A joint study is now being carried out to evaluate which orders of magnitude are of interest for Germany.
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