Germany keep Russian oil giant Rosneft subsidiaries

The German government said Friday it will keep two subsidiaries of Russian oil giant Rosneft under the control of German authorities for another six months.

The government announced a year ago that it was putting Rosneft Deutschland GmbH and Rosneft Refining and Marketing GmbH under the administration of Germany’s Federal Network Agency. In March, a German federal court threw out complaints from Rosneft and upheld the decision.

The trusteeship gave German authorities control of three Russian-owned refineries. Rosneft accounted at the time for about 12% of Germany’s oil refining capacity.

The Economy Ministry said Friday that it is extending the trusteeship again until March 10, 2024, “to secure the energy supply.”

The Rosneft subsidiaries own a refinery at Schwedt, on the Polish border northeast of Berlin, which provides petroleum products for the capital and much of northeastern Germany. Until the end of 2022, it largely processed Russian oil. It now receives oil from the Polish port of Gdansk and from Kazakhstan.

In its ruling in March, the Federal Administrative Court found that the government wasn’t obliged to give Rosneft a hearing before acting under the circumstances. It said indications of a possible withdrawal of capital backed fears that the subsidiaries could collapse — a scenario that the government already had moved to avoid with gas company Gazprom’s former German unit by taking control of that.

Germany later nationalized the former Gazprom unit, which was renamed Securing Energy for Europe.