By Christoph Steitz and Patricia Weiss
FRANKFURT (Reuters) -Wintershall Dea, one of the co-funders of Gazprom’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline, on Thursday said a cancellation of the project on political grounds would enable its operator to lodge compensation claims.
The group’s remarks come as Moscow launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine only days after Germany pulled the plug on certifying the pipeline in a first wave of sanctions on Russia.
“Should the commissioning of Nord Stream 2 be prevented by political intervention, we assume that the project company will be able to enforce compensation claims,” the company said in its annual report, referring to pipeline operator Nord Stream 2 AG.
“Currently, Wintershall Dea sees no reasonable scenario in which there will be political intervention without compensation,” said the company, which is co-owned by BASF and Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman’s LetterOne investor group.
“I appreciate your understanding that today is not a day to discuss hypotheticals and unknowns,” Wintershall Dea finance chief Paul Smith told analysts on Thursday after presenting the company’s full-year results.
He said instead of a questions-and-answers session that is typical for this sort of investor call, the group would set up individual calls in the coming weeks “as and when there is some greater clarity around the events which are unfolding as we speak and we can deal with facts, rather than speculation”.
Wintershall Dea, which along with Uniper, Shell, Engie and OMV
Uniper, whose shares hit a 14-month low on Thursday, a day earlier said it was assessing whether the pipeline’s suspension would trigger impairments on its 1 billion euro exposure to the project.
($1 = 0.8895 euros)
(Reporting by Christoph Steitz and Patricia Weiss, editing by Miranda Murray and Jason Neely)
