With the entry of the German government, the stake held by Uniper’s largest shareholder, a Finnish energy company called Fortum, will drop from 80 percent to 56 percent. Fortum had granted Uniper €8 billion in support and loan guarantees and the Finnish government, which holds the majority stake in Fortum, had refused to provide further support.
“The German government is making shareholders, including Fortum, take some of the pain,” said Deepa Venkateswaran, a utility analyst at Bernstein, a research firm. She estimated that Uniper is losing €55 million a day.
For decades, Uniper bought most of its gas from Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned supplier, and sold it to German factories and municipalities. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Gazprom has broken its long-term contracts and begun reducing the amount of gas it provides to Europe, leaving Uniper to buy gas from other providers at higher prices.
Uniper has been in talks with the government for weeks and made a formal request for help on July 8. The company has sought to portray itself as a vital cog in Germany’s energy system that was worth rescuing, not only as a leading importer of natural gas that it sells to dozens of municipalities and companies, but also because of its work with the government to build one of the country’s first terminals for receiving liquefied natural gas.
That effort should allow Germany to import fuel from a variety of sources, including the United States, easing its dependence on Russia. Before the Feb. 24 invasion, Russia provided Germany with 55 percent of its natural gas supply. In the weeks immediately after, it was able to reduce that dependence by roughly 20 percent.
Uniper is also taking steps to develop hydrogen, which is touted as the clean energy fuel of the future. “I’m pleased and relieved that today’s agreement stabilizes Uniper financially as a system-critical energy partner,” Mr. Maubach said.
Germany’s government is encouraging consumers to conserve energy. It is also replacing gas-fired generators with plants fired by coal and lignite — both of which expel more climate-warming emissions — in an effort to save more gas for heating homes and powering factories.