Wittenberg (dpa/sa) - The nitrogen works in Lutherstadt Wittenberg are concerned about the reduced natural gas deliveries from Russia. At full capacity, one is one of the largest industrial natural gas consumers in Germany, said the CFO of SKW nitrogen works Piesteritz, Carsten Franzke, on Monday. Already at the end of 2021, the company had drastically reduced production due to high gas prices. Among other things, nitrogen fertilizer and the diesel additive AdBlue are produced in the plants using large quantities of natural gas.
Saxony-Anhalt Economics Minister Sven Schulze and Parliamentary State Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Economics, Michael Kellner, visited the plants on Monday. It is important to show the federal government which energy-intensive industry is based in Saxony-Anhalt, said Economics Minister Sven Schulze (CDU) during the visit. SKW Piesteritz is "systemically relevant" for the eastern German federal states. It is therefore necessary to clearly communicate what effects a throttling of the gas supply would have in the "worst-case scenario".
The reduced gas supplies worried him, said Parliamentary State Secretary Kellner. The plant is at the heart of nitrogen production in Germany. The aim is to maintain value chains, but also to save gas and fill the storage facilities. It must and should continue at the location, he made clear. The production sets in motion a series of further processing and thus value-adding work.
Since the start of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine at the end of February, Europe's supply of gas from Russia has been considered endangered. Moscow has already throttled or completely stopped deliveries to Germany and other EU countries. The EU is trying to reduce its dependency on Russia. The federal government announced the so-called alarm level in the gas emergency plan on Thursday. Energy prices have risen sharply. In the event that Russian gas supplies fail completely, economists assume an economic crisis.
