Germany’s Uniper needs more state billions to keep buying gas: sources

FRANKFURT/BERLIN (Reuters) -The German government needs to pump tens of billions of euros of additional funding into Uniper to weather a European gas crisis after a previous scheme to help the stricken gas importer was scrapped, two sources said on Thursday.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz agreed to nationalise Uniper in September, committing 29 billion euros ($28.4 billion) to prop up Germany’s largest gas importer and prevent what it feared could be a Lehman style collapse of energy firms.

His ruling coalition had planned to supplement that support with funds raised through a gas levy that was subsequently scrapped, meaning the government will now have to commit additional funding separately.

The Handelsblatt newspaper, which first reported the need for additional funding, said the total extra support could be up to 40 billion euros, citing government and financial sources.

The additional money will come from a 200 billion euro government programme to help households and industry that had envisaged “tailor-made” solutions to support the gas importers Uniper, Sefe and EnBW’s VNG, sources said.

Uniper declined comment.

The exact funding gap would be determined by future gas price moves, sources told Reuters.

Uniper shares were down 0.8%.

Uniper had initially turned to the government for support during the summer when it became an early casualty of Europe’s energy crisis, after Russia cut gas flows to Europe in apparent retaliation for sanctions over the war in Ukraine.

Uniper CEO Klaus Dieter Maubach said in September that the firm made losses of around 100 million euros a day on gas purchases, and would lose 10 billion euros in the fourth quarter without funding support from the gas levy.

Scholz on Thursday accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of using energy as a weapon. The Kremlin has denied doing so and blamed the West for surging energy prices.

(Reporting by Christoph Steitz and Markus Wacket; writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Madeline Chambers, Rachel More and Elaine Hardcastle)