MOSCOW (MRC) -- Wintershall (part of BASF), Germany’s largest internationally active crude oil and natural gas producer, has closed sale of VNG shares to EWE. The transaction closure means EWE Aktiengesellschaft takes over the 15.79% share of Wintershall Holding GmbH in the East German company Verbundnetz Gas AG (VNG), reported BASF on its site.
The competition authorities, the boards of both companies and the VNG shareholders’ meeting had previously approved the transaction. The transaction will be executed with payment of the purchase price of EUR320 million and will be financially effective retroactively to January 1, 2014. Wintershall and EWE already agreed on the sale in March 2014.
Wintershall is increasingly concentrating on the upstream sector and is therefore divesting its own natural gas trading and storage business. The handover of the VNG shares is part of this strategy. In 2015 Wintershall intends to expand its global oil and gas production to 160 million barrels of oil equivalent. This represents an increase in production of more than half within one decade.
As MRC wrote before, in late 2013, Wintershall Holding announced that it would sell some non-operated assets in the North Sea to Hungary's MOL group (MGYOY) to focus on its own exploration and production activities in the region. The transaction garnered USD375 million for Wintershall and the deal was closed in the first quarter of 2014, pending regulatory approval.
Wintershall Holding GmbH, based in Kassel, Germany, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BASF in Ludwigshafen. The company has been active in the extraction of natural resources for 120 years, and in the exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas for over 80 years. Wintershall focuses on selected core regions where the company has built up a high level of regional and technological expertise. These are Europe, Russia, North Africa, South America, and increasingly the Middle East region.
MRC