OMV has agreed this with the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). The amount of gas “means the supply of 65,000 households for one year,” said Chancellor Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) on Thursday afternoon in Abu Dhabi. The amount of energy from one terawatt hour corresponds to a little more than one percent of Austria’s total demand for natural gas.
“That’s a good amount that we can now use to start preparing for security of supply for next year,” said the Chancellor. Austria gets the same amount of gas as the much larger Germany, so Austria gets a better deal than Germany, Nehammer stressed. The German energy group RWE recently received a first delivery of 137,000 cubic meters of LNG (Liquid Natural Gas, note) to Germany.
The amount of energy of at least one terawatt hour of gas “roughly corresponds to the entire households in Tyrol and Vorarlberg that have gas heating,” Finance Minister Magnus Brunner (ÖVP) illustrated the size of the deal.
According to the OMV broadcast, the agreement that OMV CEO Alfred Stern signed today with ADNOC Managing Director and Industry Minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, is a declaration of intent “to support Austria’s energy security , aiming to arrange the purchase of an LNG Cargo for the 2023/2024 winter season”.
The Austrian state holding ÖBAG has a 31.5 percent stake in the partially state-owned Austrian energy and chemicals group OMV, and the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala, holds 24.9 percent.
Energy Minister Leonore Gewessler (Greens) spoke of “constructive” talks in Abu Dhabi, but admitted: “We are of course conducting these talks with the full knowledge that we are not in a democracy here.” There are justified criticisms of the government that must also be taken into account in order to draw the “right lessons from the past” and put Austria’s energy supply on a broad basis.
OMV boss Stern had reported in the morning that OMV’s natural gas storage facilities were already “over 100 percent” full. “It works because there are cavities underground. And if you push gas in there, it’s possible that you can get a little more gas in than the nominal capacity.”
According to Stern, OMV accounts for around 25 percent of Austria’s gas storage capacity, “and Austria has a total storage capacity to last about a year”. OMV is already able to fully meet its customer obligations with non-Russian gas. OMV has a market share of around 45 percent in Austria. “Gazprom is currently delivering and this gas continues to flow to Austria. This is also partly the reason why prices have been significantly reduced in recent weeks.”
The liquefied natural gas from the Emirates is expected to be delivered to Rotterdam and regasified there. From there it could then be transported to Austria via pipelines. “We have already booked 40 terawatt hours of pipeline capacity for this gas year,” both from Germany and Italy, explained the OMV boss.
SPÖ: “Pure PR campaign”
Malice came from the opposition. The SPÖ spoke in a broadcast of a “pure PR campaign”. When it came to the amount of energy, the Social Democrats came up with different numbers. According to SPÖ energy spokesman Alois Schroll, the shipload of liquid gas celebrated by Nehammer corresponds to only 2 per mille of the amount of gas required in Austria each year.
Annual gas consumption in Austria is around 90 terawatt hours.
Source: Nachrichten
