Gas Marketing Western Europe

Gas supply, marketing, and trading

OMV markets and trades natural gas in eight European countries. In 2022, natural gas sales volumes amounted to 111.2 TWh (2021: 156.8 TWh). The foundation of the natural gas sales business is a diverse supply portfolio, which consists of equity gas from Austria and Norway (amounted to 36.3 TWh in 2022) and a variety of international suppliers. In addition to mid- and long-term activities, short-term activities at Europe’s main international trading hubs complement OMV’s supply portfolio.

OMV Gas Marketing & Trading GmbH’s (OMV GAS) sales activities are focused on a diverse customer portfolio in the large-scale industry and municipality segments in Austria, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Italy, Slovenia, and France are covered by opportunistic origination activities.

In 2022, the importance of the LNG business increased enormously and OMV fully utilized its allotted capacity at the Gate regasification terminal in the Netherlands. Several LNG contracts for 2023 and 2024 have already been concluded and concern non-Russian gas only. This makes the LNG business a very important building block for OMV to diversify the natural gas supply portfolio, thereby enhancing supply security.

In 2022, the European natural gas market was characterized by the unprecedented energy market crisis stemming from the war in Ukraine, with very high natural gas prices, extreme price volatility, and unpredictable supply cuts from Russia. This situation is expected to continue.

Degrading market conditions and deteriorating supply reliability drove OMV to restructure its natural gas business in 2022. A task force has been set up to minimize the adverse effects stemming from the war in Ukraine, while securing a continuous and diversified supply stream. This involves regular reporting of the security of supply status regarding OMV’s portfolio in terms of the overall natural gas supply situation, storage filling levels, and a continuous definition and adjustment of hedging strategies that mitigate the inherent price risk of gas supply disruptions. Natural gas supply diversification strategies were defined and executed, and OMV has successfully secured additional natural gas transportation capacities. Furthermore, OMV was able to fully utilize the capacity of its storage facilities. These measures have succeeded in securing OMV’s portfolio and in increasing the resilience of the supply situation for the coming years. This will mitigate the impact of Russian gas supply curtailments in Germany and Austria.

Gas logistics

OMV operates natural gas storage facilities in Austria and Germany with a capacity of 30 TWh. Additionally, OMV holds a 65% stake in the Central European Gas Hub (CEGH), the leading natural gas trading hub in Central and Eastern Europe.

The unprecedented energy market crisis caused by the war in Ukraine has had a significant impact on the European storage market. The storage utilization period of 2022 started with very low levels all over Europe. Global demand, based on recovery from the pandemic, shortage of supply, and market uncertainty due to the war led to an inverse summer/winter spread, with summer prices exceeding winter prices. European regulations concerning storage filling levels and unprecedented volatility of prices across the entire energy complex dominated the market. In this difficult environment, OMV was able to fill its storage capacity in Austria and Germany to 100% by mid-October 2022, storage level at year end was at 97%.

At the Central European Gas Hub, 633 TWh of natural gas was nominated at the Virtual Trading Point (VTP) in 2022. This volume corresponds to approximately seven times Austria’s annual natural gas consumption. The EEX CEGH Gas Market traded total volumes of 425 TWh in Austria, an increase of 84%, and 51 TWh in the Czech Republic, an increase of 79%.