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From Ulrich Wolf
Leipzig. The company with the highest turnover in Saxony, the Verbundnetz Gas AG (VNG)had revenue of 23.2 billion euros last year. Although this is significantly less than in 2022, the Group result climbed to 380 million euros. In 2022, it was still heavily in the red at 337 million euros. These figures were announced by VNG CFO and Head of Human Resources Bodo Rodestock on Tuesday at the annual press conference at the Group's headquarters in Leipzig.
According to the energy giant, it employed almost 1,690 people at the end of 2023, a good 100 more than a year earlier. "In 2023, the extreme burdens caused by gas replacement procurement for volumes no longer supplied from Russia no longer applied," said Rodestock. These costs would also be higher in 2024.
Supplies from Russia have all been replaced: by imports from Norway and Algeria, by purchases on the trading market and by frozen natural gas (LNG). CEO Ulf Heitmüller emphasized that VNG would "continue to work on concluding new supply contracts". Every additional contract is a building block for a reliable and secure gas supply.
The management announced that VNG would invest up to five billion euros in the network infrastructure for the use of so-called green gases over the next ten years, given "appropriate framework conditions". VNG sees biogas as an important component of this. As a regionally produced and base load-capable energy source, biogas makes an important contribution to security of supply. The company is also currently working on establishing a green hydrogen supply partnership with Chile.
Gas storage facility in Peißen to become Europe's fourth largest
The subsidiary responsible for renewable energies now manages 40 plants in northern and eastern Germany, it said. These could supply around 120,000 households with renewable energy every year.
The storage business area is also gaining in importance. Together with the Russian Gazprom the underground gas storage facility Catherine in Peißen near Bernburg in Saxony-Anhalt. In the fall of 2023, however, the Russian company's share, which was 50 percent, was taken without compensation, and since then VNG has had sole control of the facility. The storage facility, named after the Russian Tsarina Catherine the Great, is expected to be able to store around 600 million cubic meters of gas by 2025, making it the fourth largest natural gas storage facility in Europe. In addition to Peißen, the VNG Group also owns storage facilities in Bad Lauchstädt and Bernburg in Saxony-Anhalt as well as Jemgum and Etzel in Lower Saxony.
