Rosneft is unlikely to stop Shell’s sale of its stake in the German refinery

Rosneft is likely to fail in its appeal against a planned sale of a minority stake in a German refinery it used to control before Germany took over the Russian oil giant’s assets in the country.

Rosneft has a 54% stake in the Schwedt refinery, Germany’s fourth-largest refinery, which gets its oil from Russia’s Druzhba oil pipeline. The Schwedt refinery provides 90% of the fuel needs of the German capital, Berlin.

Shell, which owns a 37.5 percent stake in the refinery, announced late last year it plans to sell its stake to Prax Group.

Rosneft contested this planned stake sale in a German regional court. The Russian oil company argued that the agreement between the shareholders of the Schwedt refinery has a clause giving the current shareholders the right of first refusal in the event of a sale.

But the Higher Regional Court in Duesseldorf, where the Russian firm filed the legal challenge, said in a preliminary assessment on Wednesday that the complaint was unlikely to succeed.

“We see little chance of success for the complaint,” Reuters quoted the court’s Anne Frister as saying.

Earlier this month, Germany extended its guardianship over Rosneft’s German assets for another six months.

In September 2022, months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Germany placed the Russian oil giant’s local business under trusteeship, handing over control of the Schwedt refinery to the country’s energy market regulator.

The extension of the trusteeship, the fourth six-month extension, is pending negotiations for the sale of Germany’s Rosneft assets to Qatar.

In late August, reports emerged that Qatar was in talks to acquire Rosneft’s stake in the PCK Schwedt refinery.

Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, owns a 19% stake in Rosneft.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

More top reads from Oilprice.com