Oil and gas producer Wintershall Dea has close ties to Russia and is now dismayed at the escalation towards Ukraine.

"People are dying.

We are shocked by what is happening!” said CEO Mario Mehren on Thursday.

Originally, the company wanted to talk about the almost doubled profit in the past year at noon, which was mainly due to the rising energy prices.

Jan Hauser

Editor in Business.

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But after the start of the Russian attack, Wintershall Dea canceled the digital press briefing.

It is not the day to talk about financial results, it said.

"The most recent military escalation is also shaking up the economic cooperation between Russia and Europe that has been built up over decades," said Mehren.

The consequences will be far-reaching, and the extent is not yet foreseeable.

The German energy company has been active in Russia for 30 years, producing oil and natural gas there and also involved in the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

It made a loan of 730 million euros available to the project company.

If the pipeline collapses, Wintershall Dea expects compensation.

"Should political intervention prevent the commissioning of Nord Stream 2, we assume that the project company can assert claims for compensation," says the company's annual report published on Thursday.

Even if the certification process, which has not yet been completed, delays commissioning, Wintershall Dea expects that the contractual obligations towards the financial investors will be met.

Together with Gazprom

The German energy supplier Uniper, the Austrian OMV, the French Engie and Shell are also involved in financing the pipeline from Russia to Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, which was built by the Russian state-owned company Gazprom.

The total costs were estimated at 9.5 billion euros.

In reaction to the Russian actions towards Ukraine, the German government suspended the certification of the natural gas pipeline on Tuesday.

The project company based in Zug, Switzerland, is owned by Gazprom.

While the prospects also appear uncertain for energy companies in view of the Russian advance in Ukraine, Wintershall Dea can show better results for the past.

In the fourth quarter of the past fiscal year, thanks to high energy prices, adjusted operating profit came to 1.5 billion euros after 500 million euros a year ago.

For the year as a whole, it rose from EUR 1.64 billion to EUR 3.83 billion.

The oil and gas group based in Kassel and Hamburg employs 2,500 people worldwide and was created in 2019 through the merger of Deutsche Erdoel AG and Wintershall.

The Ludwigshafen chemical group BASF owns two thirds of the shares.

The rest is held by Letter One, owned by Russian entrepreneur Mikhail Fridman.

Mehren is also active as spokesman for the Russia working group in the Eastern Committee of German Business.

For a long time, the East European Committee had held on to a digital meeting with President Putin planned for early March and canceled it on Tuesday – for “duty reasons”.

At the weekend, Mehren spoke of taking part in the meeting with the Russian President: “An escalation of war in Europe would be fatal for all of us, and especially for the local people.

We must therefore think in terms of compromises, not in conflicts - and certainly not in wars!

This red line must not be crossed by anyone," he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.