Just a few minutes' walk from a metro station in the northeastern corner of Vienna, you might think that you were in Texas: a drilling installation more than 130 feet high over the open country.
Instead of oil, however, the Putten pumps nearly 1.7 million gallons per day hot water from deep underground. The heat of the water will initially be used to heat 20,000 households in the Austrian capital. It is then pumped back under the surface.
This geothermal energy will reduce natural gas consumption by the city – an important consideration in Europe, and not only because it will reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Omv, the company established in Vienna that supervises the project, tries to break a long -term dependence on Russia for gas to penetrate new energy sources.
“For us it is 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.”
“The dependence on Austria of Russia gas was extremely high,” sometimes touched 90 percent, said Anne-Sophie Corbeau, Global Research Scholar at the center of Columbia University for global energy policy.
The efforts to disconnect from Russian gas and to strengthen the energy supply of Austria come together as American and Russian officials this week to try to end the war in Ukraine. During the conversations, Kirill Dmitriev, who leads the Russian sovereign Wealth Fund, said Russia wanted to rebuild business straps with Western companies, including oil producers.
Austria was one of the first European countries to import Russian gas in 1968. In the following years, extensive business and personal ties have grown between Russia and Austria. Generations of European and Russian managers' told themselves the story about how reliable and good this is and how mutual is beneficial, “said Georg Zachmann, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a research institution established in Brussels.
Until recently, OMV, whose predecessor was managed by the Soviets after the Second World War, had no choice but to honor a large contract for the import of gas that made it in 2006 with Gazprom, the Russian gas monopoly.
But in December Mr. Stern ended the agreement, which would run until 2040. In a statement, OMV quoted Gazprom for “Multiple infringements of contractual obligations.”
OMV also said in November that it had won an arbitration advantage of 230 million euros (around $ 242 million) against Gazprom, that it applies to earlier gas invoices.
“This is a kind of turning point where we are on our way to new horizons,” said Mr. Stern.
Austria as a whole seems to have largely stopped buying Russian gas. The pipeline that Austria fed through Ukraine and Slovakia was no longer stopped at the beginning of this year.
OMV says it has prepared itself for more than two years at the moment. It is helped by being a considerable company with 24,000 employees and a large gas sales and trading activities that are good for about a third of the Austrian commercial market. For 2024, OMV reported an adjusted profit of € 5.1 million (around $ 5.3 million) at € 34 billion (around $ 36 billion) in turnover.
While the war raged in Ukraine, the gas managers of OMV moved the delivery lines, mainly via Germany. Mr. Stern said that OMV now brought gas from Norway, where OMV has production facilities.
The company has also protected the capacity for liquid natural gas shipments at a large natural gasterminal in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, called the gate, and it has signed multi -year contracts with BP and Cheniere Energy, a large American provider.
The list of these alternatives to Russian gas has been expensive, says OMV, although the Austrian government, which owns 31 percent of OMV, has contributed part of the costs. The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company also owns 25 percent of OMV.
The changed energy images in Europe has embedded the skills for petroleum production in a company such as OMV more valuable. Austria has a long-established oil and gas industry, usually run by OMV. About 1,000 wells vary an easy ride of Vienna over around 1500 square miles of mostly flat land.
Along the roads in this region, blue and green pump jackets nod as mechanical farm animals in the fields. In the rural city of Gänserndorf, an innovation and technology center with a stylish black exhibition Tower Houses experts in specialties such as drilling a well sideways or more oil from wells with the help of polymers.
In the vicinity of a city called Wittau, OMV is preparing to develop what it said was the largest gas in Austria in 40 years. Henrik Mosser, the general manager of OMV for the exploration and production of Austria, said that the discovery could increase the modest gas production of OMV in Austria by around 50 percent – or more if the nearby exploration was out.
OMV experts also take their understanding of geology to the geothermal experiment near Vienna, where the rig is a hole boring, almost two miles deep in porous rock, steeped in hot water that is 16 million years ago in an old riverbed Stacked, said Niki Knezevic, a geologist.
Although the project is pumping hot water for heating operations that are run by the utility protection Wien energy, the required expertise is comparable to what is needed for extracting petroleum.
“Drilling is drilling,” said Bernhard Novotny, the project director.
The biggest payout can be in Romania, where OMV Petrom, a subsidiary, is preparing for the development of a large gas discovery in the Black Sea called Neptun Deep. If it is successful, it should process the position of Romania as the largest gas producer in the European Union and export it to the industrial heart of the “gas hunger” in Europe, including Austria, Ross McGavin, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie, a consultancy firm , a consultancy.
Romania is perhaps the future, but what causes Austria to prevent this winter from it are the enormous supplies stored gas from the country. OMV maintains a large part of these reserves – about a quarter of the annual consumption of Austria – pumped underground in porous rocks. In general, Austria can save gas for more than a year.
In an interview in the control center of one of these facilities near Schönkirchen, Werner Schildknecht, a department manager for OMV, said that the compressors are preparing on cold days to offer “gas to Vienna in the morning”. On hot days turn the flows backwards, some contributions to shares.
This winter has been colder than the previous two, which caused the pressure on the gas markets. Like many of Europe, Austria has responded by breaking stored gas. In January, storage was the most important gas source of Austria, said Natasha Fielding, head of European gas prices at Argus Media, a research agency.
Europe and Austria pay a stiff price for the limitation of Russian gas. Although the European prices may not have reached the astronomical levels of 2022, they recently reached two -year highlights. Austria pays even more and reflects the costs of bringing gas across borders, mainly via Germany.
Mr. Stern, the OMV chef, said that the cold was good for the Austrian economy, referring to better conditions for skiing, a top drawing for tourists. He added that the rise in prices in 2022 had been heavy for customers and probably had led to “permanent reduction” in the demand for gas.
Mr. Stern said that the way to reduce the prices was that Europe is acquiring more energy sources, both at home and abroad.
President Trump's efforts to arrange the conflict in Ukraine offer a different possible route to extra supplies. The energy industry begins to discuss a resumption of Russian gas flows to Europe if a cease-fire is reached.
Even modest quantities of Russian gas would “get considerable pressure from the European gas market,” wrote Henning Gloystein, an energy analyst at Eurasia Group, a political risk company, in a newsletter.
Mr. Stern sounded skeptical about resuming things with Russia. “There is no law to Russia Gas,” he said, but “the unreliability of the offer via Gazprom was no longer acceptable.”
