Poland forces Germany to steal the Russian assets

Alexey Gromov, Principal Director on Energy Studies of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to the Vzglyad business newspaper on the situation around the German refinery of the Rosneft company.

After Gazprom lost its assets in Poland, and then in Germany, the European property of Rosneft may suffer next. Nationalization threatens the German refinery in the city of Schwedt, where the Russian company owns 54%. Poland is pushing the Germans to take this step, refusing to supply raw materials to the plant through the Druzhba oil pipeline.

The market way out of this situation is the sale of Rosneft's share in this plant at an adequate price.

“The German authorities could start negotiations with Rosneft in order to protect employees working at this enterprise from dismissal or to maintain the rating of the authorities in this region. Rosneft will be happy to get rid of this asset, because after the embargo is introduced, it will no longer be profitable, but will only create problems,” says Alexey Gromov, Energy Director at the Institute for Energy and Finance.

However, it is hardly worth counting on this option.

“So far, the German authorities have not taken any steps in this direction. And in general, we see that all their efforts to solve energy problems end in failure. Germany can neither solve the problems with Nord Stream 1, nor agree on LNG purchases with Qatar, Canada, etc.,” the interlocutor notes.

The second option is the nationalization of Rosneft's stake in the German refinery. Germany has already chosen this path when, in fact, it nationalized a subsidiary of Gazprom, the gas trader Gazprom Germania. Poland previously also appropriated Gazprom's share in the operator of the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline.

“We don't know any precedents when the Europeans honestly bought out the Russian share. Whereas the norms of international law in Europe in relations with Russian companies are violated far and wide. Therefore, nationalization is a more likely option, although it is difficult,” Gromov points out.