Austria, a Longtime Buyer of Russian Gas, Tries to Break the Habit

New York Times

23-02-2025

Just a few minutes' walk from a metro station in the northeast corner of Vienna, you might think that you were in Texas: A drilling rig more than 130 feet high looms over open land.
Instead of oil, though, the wells will pump close to 1.7 million gallons a day of hot water from deep underground. The water's heat will be used initially to warm 20,000 households in the Austrian capital. It will then be pumped back below the surface.
This geothermal energy will reduce the city's consumption of natural gas — an important consideration in Europe, and not just because it will cut carbon dioxide emissions. OMV, the Vienna-based company supervising the project, is trying to break a longstanding dependency on Russia for gas by pushing to secure new energy sources.
'For us it's a new chapter,' said OMV's chief executive, Alfred Stern. For the first time in six decades, 'we no longer have Russian gas in our portfolio.'
Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine put intense pressure on Central European countries to rethink their approach to energy. But breaking with Russian gas has been difficult for Austria, which until recently was one of a handful of European countries to keep importing the fuel by pipeline.
'The dependency from Austria on Russia gas was extremely high,' at times touching 90 percent, said Anne-Sophie Corbeau, global research scholar at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy.
The efforts to decouple from Russian gas and fortify Austria's energy supply come as American and Russian officials met this week to try to end the war in Ukraine. During the talks, Kirill Dmitriev, who heads Russia's sovereign wealth fund, said Russia was seeking to rebuild business ties with Western companies, including oil producers.
Austria was among the first European countries to begin importing Russian gas in 1968. Extensive business and personal ties have grown between Russia and Austria in the years since. Generations of European and Russian executives 'told themselves the story about how reliable and good this all is and how mutually beneficial,' said Georg Zachmann, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based research institution.
Until recently, OMV, whose predecessor was managed by the Soviets after World War II, argued that it had no choice but to honor a large gas import contract that it made in 2006 with Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly.
But in December, Mr. Stern terminated the agreement, which was to run until 2040. In a statement, OMV cited Gazprom for 'multiple breaches of contractual obligations.'
OMV also said in November that it had won a 230-million-euro (about $242 million) arbitration judgment against Gazprom, which it is applying to past invoices for gas.
'This is kind of a turning point where we are headed for new horizons,' Mr. Stern said.
Austria as a whole appears to have largely stopped buying Russian gas. The pipeline that fed Austria through Ukraine and Slovakia stopped flowing at the beginning of this year.
OMV says it has prepared for this moment for more than two years. It is helped by being a sizable company with 24,000 employees and a large gas sales and trading business that accounts for about a third of the Austrian commercial market. For 2024, OMV reported adjusted earnings of €5.1 million (about $5.3 million) on €34 billion (roughly $36 billion) in sales.
While war raged in Ukraine, OMV's gas managers have been shifting supply lines, mainly through Germany. Mr. Stern said OMV was now bringing gas piped from Norway, where OMV has production facilities.
The company also has secured capacity for liquefied natural gas shipments at a large natural gas terminal in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, called the Gate, and it has signed multiyear contracts with BP and Cheniere Energy, a large American provider.
Lining up these alternatives to Russian gas has been costly, OMV says, even though the Austrian government, which owns 31 percent of OMV, contributed a portion of the expense. The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company also owns 25 percent of OMV.
The changed energy picture in Europe has made the petroleum production skills embedded in a company like OMV more valuable. Austria has a long-established oil and gas industry, mostly run by OMV. Some 1,000 wells range over about 1,500 square miles of mostly flat land an easy drive from Vienna.
Along the roads in this region, blue and green pump jacks nod like mechanical farm animals in the fields. In the rural town of Gänserndorf, an Innovation and Technology Center with a stylish black exhibit tower houses experts in specialties like drilling a well laterally or squeezing more oil from wells using polymers.
Near a town called Wittau, OMV is preparing to develop what it says is the largest gas find in Austria in 40 years. Henrik Mosser, OMV's general manager for Austria exploration and production, said the discovery could increase OMV's modest gas production in Austria about 50 percent — or more if nearby exploration panned out.
OMV experts are also taking their understanding of geology to the geothermal experiment near Vienna, where the rig is boring a hole nearly two miles deep into porous rock, steeped in hot water that piled up in an ancient riverbed 16 million years ago, said Niki Knezevic, a geologist.
Although the project pumps hot water for heating operations run by the utility Wien Energie, the required expertise is similar to what is needed for extracting petroleum.
'Drilling is drilling,' said Bernhard Novotny, the project director.
The largest payoff may come in Romania, where OMV Petrom, a subsidiary, is preparing to develop a major gas discovery in the Black Sea called Neptun Deep. If successful, it should cement Romania's position as the largest gas producer in the European Union and enable exports to Europe's 'gas hungry' industrial heartland, including Austria, said Ross McGavin, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie, a consulting firm.
Romania may be the future, but what's keeping Austria from freezing this winter are the country's vast stocks of stored gas. OMV maintains a large portion of these reserves — about a quarter of Austria's annual consumption — pumped underground into porous rocks. Overall, Austria can store more than a year's worth of gas.
In an interview in the control center of one of these facilities near Schönkirchen, Werner Schildknecht, a department manager for OMV, said that on cold days its compressors gear up to 'provide gas to Vienna in the mornings.' On warm days, the flows reverse, adding to stocks.
This winter has been colder than the previous two, jacking up pressure on the gas markets. Like much of Europe, Austria has responded by burning up stored gas. In January, storage was Austria's main source of gas, said Natasha Fielding, head of European gas pricing at Argus Media, a research firm.
Europe and Austria are paying a stiff price for the curtailment of Russian gas. Although European prices may not have reached the astronomical levels of 2022, they recently hit two-year highs. Austria pays even more, reflecting the cost of bringing gas across borders, mainly through Germany.
Mr. Stern, the OMV chief, said the cold weather was good for the Austrian economy, referring to better conditions for skiing, a top draw for tourists. He added that the surge in prices in 2022 had been tough on customers and probably had led to 'permanent reduction' in demand for gas.
Mr. Stern said the way to lower prices was for Europe to acquire more sources of energy both at home and abroad.
President Trump's efforts to settle the Ukraine conflict offer another potential route to added supplies. The energy industry is beginning to discuss the possibility of a resumption of Russian gas flows to Europe if a cease-fire is reached.
Even modest amounts of Russian gas would 'take significant pressure out of the European gas market,' Henning Gloystein, an energy analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk firm, wrote in a newsletter.
Mr. Stern sounded skeptical about resuming business with Russia. 'There is no law against Russia gas,' he said, but 'the unreliability of supply through Gazprom was no longer acceptable.'