Friday, July 22, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that the State will enter up to 30 % to the group’s capital, the main importer and gas storage across the Rhine, threatened with bankruptcy due to decreases of gas deliveries from Russia.
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The energy crisis will have been right about Olaf Scholz’s holidays. Three days after joining Bavaria for two weeks off, the German chancellor went back and forth in Berlin on Friday July 22 to announce the rescue of the Uniper group, the main importer and gas storage across the Rhine, threatened with Insolvency due to the drop in Russian gas deliveries.
Negotiated for weeks, the plan provides for the entry of the State to the capital of Uniper up to 30 % and the granting of a public loan of up to 7.7 billion euros, in the form of bonds convertible into shares. The credit line from which the company already benefits from the German public bank KFW will also be increased from 2 to 9 billion euros. “Uniper is a company of capital importance for the economic development of our country and for the energy supply of citizens,” said Scholz by presenting these emergency measures during a press conference at the Chancellery .
With 80 % by the Finnish group Fortum, Uniper undergoes the consequences of the war in Ukraine. Since mid-June, the company only receives 40 % of gas volumes negotiated by contract with the Russian giant Gazprom, of which it is the main customer in Germany. In order to continue to deliver its customers, the group must not only buy the missing quantities on the cash market, where prices have exploded, but also draw on its own reserves.
“The risk is that of a lehman brothers of energy “
However, for lack of being able to immediately increase this increase on the bills of its buyers, Uniper ran straight towards bankruptcy, its losses amounting to several tens of millions of euros per day. “The risk is that of a Lehman Brothers of Energy,” warned German Minister Robert Habeck at the end of June, in reference to the American bank whose fall, in 2008, had provoked a crisis global financial.
If it saves the company, the rescue plan presented by Mr. Scholz will not be without consequences on consumers. The German chancellor was not hidden from it, explaining that Uniper would be authorized to pass on his customers the increases in the purchase prices of gas “from 1 er October, or even perhaps From the 1 er September “. For a family of four, the gas bill could increase from 200 to 300 euros per year, he recognized.
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