“Putin’s oil-giant broadens its stance in Germany”

Russian oil company Rosneft is set to increase its business activities in Germany, Daniel Wetzel writes in Welt Online. Russia’s largest oil producer is doubling its investments in the country to 600 million euros over the next five years, CEO Igor Sechin said in Berlin. The company also plans to connect southern Germany to its eastern European grid by building a direct pipeline to Rosneft’s refineries near Karlsruhe and Ingolstadt, Wetzel writes. Rosneft is now Germany’s third largest refiner and provides 25 percent of the country’s crude oil imports, he explains. The EU together with the US has imposed economic sanctions on Rosneft due to Russia’s role in the war in eastern Ukraine, which Sechin called “a sign of weakness,” Wetzel writes.

Read the article in German here.

Also see the CLEW factsheet Germany’s dependence on imported fossil fuels.