Chronicle

More supply security for Europe: after just two years of construction, the energy companies RAG, WINGAS and Gazprom have completed the expansion of the Haidach natural gas storage facility near Salzburg.
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BASF and Gazprom celebrate the 20th anniversary of their partnership: The companies laid the foundations for their cooperation in autumn 1990 with a long-term agreement to market Russian natural gas in Germany.
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Construction of the OPAL natural gas pipeline begins: In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Saxony work commences on one of the largest natural gas pipelines in Europe.
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The joint natural gas storage project of EWE and WINGAS in Jemgum in the Leer district is starting to take shape: following the preparatory construction work of recent weeks, construction of the required infrastructure has now begun.
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Central Europe’s second largest underground natural gas storage set up in Austria: In addition to Western Europe’s largest natural gas storage in Rehden (Northern Germany), which WINGAS put into operation in 1993, the company opened a new underground natural gas storage facility in Austria (Haidach) together with Austrian Rohöl-Aufsuchungs AG (RAG) and OOO GAZPROM EXPORT.
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The EU Commissioner for Energy, Andris Piebalgs, visits Western Europe's largest gas storage facility - the WINGAS storage facility in Rehden, North Germany. He stressed that gas storage facilities have a major significance for secure energy supplies in Europe – since it is only the use of facilities such as this that guarantees the stable availability of the environmentally friendly energy source in the necessary quantities.
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Official start: Germany's Economics Minister Wolfgang Clement, Thuringia's Economics Minister Jürgen Reinholz, and WINGAS Chairman Dr. Rainer Seele officially open the new gas compressor station at Eischleben near Erfurt.
The joint ground-breaking ceremony also marks the start of further extensive expansion work on STEGAL, the natural gas pipeline that runs through Saxony and Thuringia. With these construction activities WINGAS will increase its east-west transport capacity by around 50 percent at a cost of around 200 million euros. An additional 50 million euros will be spent on expanding the WEDAL gas pipeline link through North Rhine Westphalia.
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The joint gas conditioning plant of Bielefeld’s municipal utilities and WINGAS is commissioned on the premises of Mitsubishi HiTec Paper GmbH in Bielefeld-Hillegossen, completing this two-million-euro construction project one year after the first sod was turned. By adding compressed air, the new WINGAS conditioning plant conditions high-caloric natural gas (H gas), which has a higher fuel value and is traded almost exclusively on international spot markets, to Bielefeld's gas quality specifications before the gas enters the local network.
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WINGAS has nudged the competition in neighbouring country Belgium by adding powerful momentum. The company has already signed supply contracts with industrial customers in Belgium and has succeeded already in the middle term in securing a market share of 6 per cent of the Belgian gas market. In order to step up this marketing activity, the company WINGAS Belgium has been established with headquarters in Brussels.
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Transparency: WINGAS publishes its storage fees on the Internet.
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Ten years of Russo-German partnership. A hitherto unique Russo-German business relationship in the gas industry began precisely ten years before: on 26th September 1990 Gazprom and Wintershall signed the “Agreement on Partnership in the Gas Industry”. Germany’s economics and technology minister, Werner Müller, commended this in Berlin before representatives from the world of politics, business and culture as a new form of Russo-German cooperation which, he said, lent a new quality to joint business undertakings between the two countries.
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Following redevelopment, the gas storage reservoir in Rehden is the largest of its kind in Germany. With capacity of 4.2 billion m³ of natural gas, WINGAS now maintains around a quarter of the available storage capacity in Germany - enough to supply around two million households with natural gas for a year.
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On track: WEDAL is completed on time, perfecting the connection to Zeebrugge in Belgium and, via the Interconnector marine pipeline, to Britain. Conoco and British Gas begin supplying their natural gas to WINGAS. Following a press conference, WINGAS celebrates the start of WEDAL operation with an evening event in Düsseldorf.
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Progress: JAGAL reaches its second stage with the completion of the Mallnow-Baruth section.
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Start of construction of WEDAL. Today, the long-distance pipeline WEDAL connects MIDAL with the Belgian natural gas transit grid along an extent of some 320 km, and enables the transport both of natural gas from (north-)western Europe and from Russia.
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Good links to the east: with the laying of the Oder river crossing (double pipeline), the first step is made in building JAGAL (Yamal Gas Link). The JAGAL gas pipeline will connect the WINGAS pipeline system with the YAMAL-Europe pipeline to transport Russian natural gas to western Europe.
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"WINGAS at the market": Ceremony in Ludwigshafen for the official start-up of the entire WINGAS infrastructure (STEGAL, MIDAL, RHG, Rehden gas storage facility) and the beginning of the gas supplies at BASF, Ludwigshafen.
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Start of receipt of British North Sea gas from the Markham field. The gas is fed into MIDAL from the Dutch pipeline system at Bunde.
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Start of MIDAL gas pipeline (Mitte-Deutschland-Anbindungs-Leitung, Central Germany gas link).
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In 1991 Wintershall and Gazprom start to build their own infrastructure: the STEGAL pipeline, designed to transport Russian gas to German customers, and MIDAL, the central German connecting pipeline.
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Wintershall and Gazprom sign a co-operation contract for gas trading.
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