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Germany expects to extend for another six months its trusteeship over the German assets of Rosneft while Qatar and the Russian oil giant are reportedly in talks over a sale to the gas-rich Gulf nation, sources with knowledge of the situation told Reuters on Monday.
Schwedt is the fourth-largest refinery in Germany, it is 54% owned by the Russian state oil giant, and it gets its oil from the Druzhba oil pipeline from Russia. The Schwedt refinery supplies 90% of the fuel needs of Germany’s capital city Berlin.
In September 2022, a few months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany put the local business of Russia’s Rosneft under trusteeship, handing control over the Schwedt refinery to the country’s energy market regulator.
“With the trusteeship, the threat to the security of energy supply is countered and an essential foundation stone is set for the preservation and future of the Schwedt site,” the German government said at the time.
Now the extension of the trusteeship, which ends on September 10, is reportedly in anticipation of the negotiations for the sale of the Rosneft assets to Qatar, according to Reuters’s sources.
The extension would be the fourth time Germany has prolonged the period of trusteeship since September 2022.
Rosneft is Germany’s third-largest petroleum refinery company, processing roughly 12.5 million tons of crude oil per year. That’s more than 12% of Germany’s total processing capacity, according to Rosneft Germany.
Last week, reports emerged that Qatar is reportedly in talks to purchase Rosneft’s stake in the PCK Schwedt refinery.
Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the Qatari sovereign wealth fund, owns a 19% stake in Rosneft.
According to a report by Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources, Qatar is the last bidder for the refinery, with a delegation visiting Berlin in “recent weeks”. Bloomberg’s unnamed sources also said that the German government would agree to a deal with Qatar, and that the ball is now in Rosneft’s court.
