Amid soaring inflation paired with surging wholesale gas and energy prices, Wien Energie, Austria’s largest energy provider, has called for emergency financial support from the federal government to pay its debts.
The Austrian energy giant, which supplies gas and electricity to some two million domestic customers, revealed its financial distress on Sunday evening during an emergency meeting with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer (ÖVP), and Wolfgang Urbantschitsch, who serves as a board member of the government’s energy regulator, telling the state that it requires 1.7 to 1.8 billion euros to meet its financial obligations, Kronen Zeitung reports.
The call for financial assistance from the federal government comes as the City of Vienna, which is rumored to have made billions in support payments to the energy giant on several occasions, said that it can no longer foot the bills alone. The rumored payments have placed the leftist-globalist Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs (SPÖ)—which holds a majority in the capital’s local government—under intense pressure, as the FPÖ has accused them of a large-scale cover-up operation.
“If that’s true, Ludwig and his party must resign immediately and there must be new elections in Vienna,” said Vienna FPÖ leader Dominik Nepp, criticizing the local government’s alleged bypassing of the Vienna City Council. The Viennese ÖVP, for their part, has called for clarification and political consequences as quickly as possible.
Wien Energie, meanwhile, has emphatically stressed that it is by no means insolvent. “As part of the Austrian energy industry, we are in talks with the federal government to ensure a stable overall situation for energy supply in Vienna and all of Austria in the long term,” the company wrote on Twitter, adding: “No, Wien Energie is not bankrupt.”
To the northwest, in Germany, energy companies are not faring much better as the Russian Federation continues to choke off gas supplies to Europe. On Monday, Uniper, one of Germany’s largest energy companies, asked the state-owned bank KfW for an additional 4 billion euros to an existing 9-billion-euros credit line to help ensure the company’s “short-term liquidity,” Frankfurter Allgemine Zeitung reported.
“As long as energy prices continue to rise in Europe, the need for liquid funds will also increase,” said Uniper CEO Klaus-Dieter Maubach, adding that within the month, gas prices had “approximately doubled from an already high level.”
The Financial Times reports:
Uniper, historically Europe’s largest buyer of Russian gas, said that the volumes it received from Russia had fallen by 80 per cent since June, forcing it to procure alternative supplies at “significantly higher prices” — resulting in cash losses of “well over” €100mn a day.
The Düsseldorf-based company is a major gas supplier and among Europe’s largest electricity generators with 34 gigawatts of capacity. It has about 600 clients in Germany and neighbouring countries, ranging from industrial customers and municipalities to regional distributors.
The news comes just days after electricity prices in Germany and France, two of Europe’s most crucial markets, climbed to new highs, surging to 995 euros and past 1,100 euros per megawatt-hour (MWh), respectively, a more than tenfold increase in both countries compared to last year, as The European Conservative previously reported.
