Guaranteed security of supply

WINGAS operates Western Europe's largest natural gas storage facility
Additional storage facilities under construction in the UK and Austria

Kassel. When it comes to expanding its activities on the European natural gas market, the German-Russian joint venture WINGAS, a subsidiary of BASF AG and the Russian natural gas group Gazprom, aims above all for a secure supply for its customers. The WINGAS natural gas storage facility in Rehden, south of Bremen, is the largest in Western Europe. Covering an area of eight square kilometers, it stores over four billion cubic meters of natural gas underground at a depth of 2000 meters. This is enough to supply two million households with natural gas for an entire year. The Kassel-based gas company WINGAS serves customers in Germany and Western Europe, in particular regional suppliers, municipal utilities and industrial end customers. The storage facility is connected to a WINGAS pipeline network in Germany, which is over 2000 kilometers long.

"The Rehden natural gas storage facility guarantees our customers a warm winter", says Dr. Rainer Seele, Chairman of the Board of Directors of WINGAS. Using such storage capacities is the only way to guarantee stable availability of this environment-friendly energy medium by balancing gas production and consumption. "During peak consumption periods, additional gas volumes can be fed into the network, and during times of low demand, any surplus volumes can be absorbed", explains Seele. Volumes not used in the summer are stored in Rehden and then used to supply customers in the high-consumption winter months.

In addition to the original more long-term task of seasonal adjustment, storage facilities are also becoming increasingly sought-after for flexible demand optimization, says Seele. "There is definitely heightened interest in this regard on the European market".

WINGAS will therefore be launching central Europe's second largest natural gas storage facility in Haidach, Austria, in 2007, together with Rohöl-Aufsuchungsgesellschaft (RAG) and the Gazprom subsidiary, OOO Gazexport. The Haidach storage facility will accommodate up to 2.4 billion cubic meters of gas. This volume corresponds to around 30 percent of Austria's total annual natural gas consumption. The Haidach natural gas reservoir was discovered in 1997 at a depth of 1600 meters.

The acquisition of what was once the UK's largest onshore natural gas field at Saltfleetby is another step forward in the further expansion of European natural gas storage capacities. Gas has been produced from the field off the east coast of England since 1999. There is an application under way to change the use of the former reservoir into a storage facility and is due to go on stream in 2008. The UK has very little storage capacity. "The Saltfleetby storage facility is strategically very important for the UK and will help to increase the country's security of supply", says Seele.

"Our strategy of expanding storage capacities close to the market sees WINGAS playing it safe when it comes to supplying customers with natural gas", said Seele "but Europe as a whole must do much more in terms of independence from political and economic instabilities along existing transit routes. The construction of the Baltic Sea pipeline is an important step towards establishing a direct connection to Russian natural gas sources."

WINGAS GmbH is a joint venture of Wintershall (65%) and the Russian company OAO Gazprom (35%). The two partners have been supplying gas since 1990. As partners of WINGAS, BASF/Wintershall and Gazprom have to date invested around 3 billion euros in setting up the WINGAS natural gas pipeline system. The network links the major gas reserves in Siberia with the growing markets in Western Europe and also provides WINGAS with access to the developing European spot markets.

WINGAS. More energy - together.

Note to publishers:
Should you wish to visit the Rehden natural gas storage facility, please contact our press hotline by phone on +49 561 301-3301 or by e-mail to press@wingas.de.

WINGAS PI-06-02 - 02/01/06

Contact:
Nicholas Neu
Phone +49 561 301-3301
Fax +49 561 301-1321
press@wingas.de

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