The Kremlin Did Not See the Seizure of Assets in The Decision on The Shares of Wintershall and OMV
The day before, President Vladimir Putin signed decrees depriving Wintershall and OMV of shares in two joint ventures with Gazprom.
“There was and is no process of seizure,” says press secretary of the head of state Dmitry Peskov.
The decrees of President Vladimir Putin, depriving Wintershall and OMV of shares in two joint ventures with Gazprom, do not mean that assets are being seized from foreign companies, the head of state’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters, an RBC correspondent reports.
“No, Russia has not started the seizure process, there is no seizure. Those who leave the market – assets are sold or transferred, it all depends on negotiations. There was and is no process of confiscation,” Peskov said.
The day before, the German oil and gas company Wintershall and the Austrian OMV lost their stakes in companies that were developing the Yuzhno-Russkoye oil and gas condensate field and the Achimov deposits of the Urengoy field. Putin ordered the creation of an LLC to manage these deposits. SOGAZ and Gas Technologies are invited to purchase shares in them.
In January of this year, Wintershall Dea announced its intention to leave Russia. Before this, the Russian authorities introduced maximum prices for gas, above which Gazprom is prohibited from buying it from enterprises that it jointly owns with Wintershall. In July, the company began the legal separation of its Western business from its enterprises in Russia.
The Austrian OMV announced in March last year that it was abandoning new investments in Russia and plans to reconsider its stake in the Yuzhno-Russkoye oil and gas field. This summer, the head of the company, Alfred Stern, said that OMV would not refuse Russian gas and would continue to purchase it in the winter (Gazprom and OMV have had a long-term contract since 2018, valid until 2040). The company had previously agreed to pay for gas supplies in rubles.
