“Blocked, demoralised, and yet optimistic”

Political stalemate has caused the turnover of Germany’s domestic oil and gas industry to shrink considerably, Franz Hubik writes in Handelsblatt. Revenues in the industry fell to 1.8 billion euros in 2016 – a year-on-year drop of almost 40 percent – because of sluggish licensing of new drilling projects and low fuel prices, Hubik explains. But a new legislative framework sparks fresh hope in the industry despite tighter environmental standards and a fracking ban, he adds. “We’ll now tackle the projects we’ve been placing on hold,” Florian Barsch, German branch CEO of oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil, told Handelsblatt. While Germany imports most of the fossil fuels it consumes, eight percent of the natural gas supply and two percent of the oil supply are covered by domestic sources, according to Hubik.

Read the article in German here.

For background, see the CLEW factsheets Germany’s dependence on imported fossil fuels and Germany’s energy consumption and power mix in charts.