NGlobal Magazin 01-2010

Niedersachsen Global www.nglobal.de Energy 19 Photo: EWE long term while we continue to exploit our finite re- serves of natural gas. EWE is preparing for this, we are continuously expanding our natural gas storage capacities. The liberalisation of the energy markets made an impact on the electricity market and is now beginning to affect the gas market as well. What arrangements are you making to handle the increased competition? What opportunities do you hope will come up for your network business? Our comprehensive experience in transporting, storing and distributing natural gas allows our customers to benefit from low prices. Thanks to this and our broad catalogue of services and consultancy, we are well po- sitioned in the gas business. We also have efficient technical and organisational structures in place in our network business which allow us to benefit from the upturn in the trade and transport of gas volumes. EnBW AG recently acquired a 26 percent stake in EWE. How can your company benefit strategically from this alliance? In a market shaped by increasing competition, access to production capacities is more and more important. We want to expand our conventional generation of electricity with the help of EnBW. Acquiring Bremen-based swb also helped us towards this goal, because it has its own power plants. Therefore our partnership with EnBW and the strategic growth of our company are also important for our customers. Having a strong strategic partner means we benefit from knowledge- sharing as well as from pooling our activities. In the future, the collaboration be- tween EnBW and EWE will focus on the areas of renewable energies, gas storage and electricity generation. Both EWE and EnBW enjoy strong municipal partnerships. EnBW is 45 percent municipally owned, while 74 percent of EWE belongs to cities and districts in the Ems/Weser/Elbe region. What effect will this share- holder structure have on how the two companies work together? “We want to expand our conventional generation of electricity with the help of EnBW.” ›