Wintershall: Europe Must Continue Full Use of Hydrocarbons

Wintershall said on Wednesday that the price gap with the US would decrease EU exports of energy-intensive goods by about a third in the next 20 years. 

“The energy prices are a challenge for Germany. They endanger our international competitiveness,” Rainer Seele, Chairman of the Wintershall Board of Executive Directors said on Wednesday.

According to the German company, the risk is higher for countries with a great export propensity like for example Germany. 

“In order to preserve its competitiveness, Germany must reform the energy policy transformation. We need to return to sound economic rationale,” Seele said at the Handelsblatt Annual Conference of the Energy Sector in Berlin. 

Wintershall’s CEO said that indigenous production is key to energy security, looking at the North Sea and at German shale gas.

“Supply security begins on our own doorstep and in our own market,” Seele said on Tuesday. 

Quoting a recent poll, he also said that German citizens are in favour of domestic production. Seele sees in shale gas great business opportunities and a limited risk for the environment. The press release says that Germany has been producing gas with minimal hydraulic fracturing  in the last 30 years.

“At the moment the authorization process has come to a standstill. What we need here is an informed debate and legal clarity. And we need these urgently,” he said.