In Gas Marketing & Power, OMV aims to further strengthen and diversify its customer portfolio in Western Europe and to regionally expand the Gas & Power business in Romania. In 2024, the European natural gas market was still impacted by the energy market crisis stemming from the war in Ukraine, with very volatile natural gas prices.
Gas Marketing Western Europe
OMV markets and trades natural gas in several European countries, as well as in Turkey. In 2024, natural gas sales volumes West amounted to 53.1 TWh (2023: 85.0 TWh). The foundation of the natural gas sales business is a diverse supply portfolio, which consists of equity gas from Austria and Norway (amounting to 30.5 TWh in 2024 and 30.7 TWh in 2023) and a variety of international suppliers. In addition to mid- and long-term activities, short-term activities at Europe’s main international trading hubs complement OMV’s supply portfolio.
Gas Supply, Marketing, and Trading
OMV’s Gas Marketing & Trading sales activities focus on a diverse customer portfolio in the large-scale industry and municipality segments in Austria, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Belgium, with origination opportunities in Italy, Slovakia, France, and the United Kingdom. OMV also aims to include green gases in its portfolio to reduce carbon intensity.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine OMV has been consistently pursuing a strategy to diversify supply sources and is no longer dependent on Russian gas deliveries into Austria. OMV sources natural gas from its own production in Norway and Austria, as well as from Norwegian natural gas producers. In addition, OMV also has access to all major Central and Northwest European natural gas trading and capacity marketplaces. Because of this access to alternative natural gas supply sources and the additional transportation capacities, OMV can supply its customers with non-Russian natural gas.
A long-term LNG supply contract was concluded in 2024 for the period 2025–2029 and refers to non-Russian natural gas only. This makes the LNG business a very important building block for the diversification of OMV’s natural gas supply portfolio, thereby enhancing supply security. OMV further secured additional 29 TWh of European transportation capacities into Austria for the period from 2026 until 2029. This enables the Company to supply equity gas and third-party volumes from Norway to Austria, as well as LNG volumes, leveraging its contracted long-term annual capacity of 3 bcm at the Gate regasification terminal in Rotterdam. In 2024, OMV almost fully utilized this allotted capacity at the terminal.
A dedicated OMV Gas Task Force was established in 2022, to secure a continuous and diversified supply stream, monitor the overall natural gas supply situation and storage filling levels, fully utilize storage facilities and achieve a diversified supply portfolio independent of Russian gas. Following the conclusion of arbitration proceedings in relation to the German gas supply contract with Gazprom Export under ICC rules in November 2024, OMV received an arbitral award that granted damages to OMV which were set off against payments under the Austrian gas supply contract. After consideration of related hedging losses, the positive net impact of the arbitral award on the clean Operating Result of the Gas Marketing & Power business in Q4/24 is around EUR 210 mn. In December 2024, OMV terminated its long-term natural gas supply contract with Gazprom Export due to multiple fundamental breaches of contractual obligations, and in doing so significantly reduced the risk exposure of OMV Gas Marketing & Trading (OGMT). Furthermore, on January 3, 2025, the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce (SCC) ruled in favor of OMV in the arbitration proceedings in relation to the Austrian supply contract, awarding OMV compensation by Gazprom Export LLC.
Gas Logistics
OMV operates natural gas storage facilities in Austria and Germany with a capacity of approximately 30 TWh. Additionally, OMV holds a 65% stake in the Central European Gas Hub (CEGH), the leading natural gas trading hub in Central and Eastern Europe. Due to the previous mild winter in 2023, European storage system operators were able to start the new storage year in April 2024 with a relatively high storage level of 59% (April 1, 2023: 56%). A significant number of new international and national legal requirements and a consistently high degree of price volatility dominated the energy market. In this challenging environment, the OMV Gas Storage business still managed to win new customers in 2024, expand the design capacity, and fill the OMV storage facilities to a maximum level of 93% in Austria and 95% in Germany. At the Central European Gas Hub, 700 TWh of natural gas was nominated at the Virtual Trading Point (VTP) in 2024. This volume corresponds to approximately ten times Austria’s annual natural gas consumption.
Gas & Power Eastern Europe
In terms of power generation, OMV continues to benefit from the integration of gas and electricity in Romania, with profitability driven by power margins and spark spreads, alongside balancing services, and integration with renewable power capacities.
The energy markets were confronted with yet another year characterized by high volatility. Prices for gas and power continued the downward trend that started in 2023, with some recovery by the end of the year. Consumption of gas and power in Romania continues to be impacted, although some improvements could be seen especially in the last months of 2024. The gas and power markets in Romania continued to be highly regulated in 2024, with more than half of gas and power sales portfolios subject to some form of regulation or taxation. In April, the applicable regulatory framework was further modified, affecting the power business in particular.
Gas
Natural gas sales volumes East reached 32.2 TWh in 2024, 16% lower than the 38.3 TWh achieved in 2023. Sales to the regulated market and district heating for households were down, as were volumes sold to the non-regulated wholesale market and to end user portfolios. Despite the challenging overall context, OMV Petrom successfully maintained a leading gas supplier position on Romania’s non-household gas market.
In 2024, OMV Petrom entered the gas supply market in Bulgaria, a natural step in consolidating the presence in the regional markets. This builds on the Company’s experience and knowledge of the Bulgarian gas market, where it already has wholesales activities, but also on the presence of the OMV filling station network in the country and exploration operations in the Black Sea. In the Republic of Moldova, OMV Petrom became one of the main gas suppliers in 2024.
Power
The Brazi gas power plant generated 4.9 TWh of net electrical output in 2024, 18% higher compared to the level achieved in 2023, due to a shorter planned maintenance. It covered 10% of Romania’s generation mix, strongly supporting the supply security and stability of the national power system. OMV Petrom also continued regional power operations in 2024, capturing market opportunities and consolidating its position and expertise.
OMV Petrom has made significant progress toward its strategic objective of 2.5 GW of renewable power capacity installed by 2030. Together with partners a strong portfolio of projects, opportunities, and initiatives has been established, with different phasing of implementation, and a well-balanced mix of its own developed projects and partnerships. For further details please see the Low Carbon Business section.