Wintershall
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| Subsidiary | |
| Founded | 1894 |
| Headquarters | Kassel, Germany |
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Key people
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Mario Mehren |
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12.99 billion EUR (2015) (source: 2015 annual statement) 15.15 billion EUR (2014) |
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Number of employees
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2,000 (2015) 2,715 (2014) (source: 2015 annual statement) |
| Parent | BASF |
| Website | www |
12.99 billion EUR (2015) (source: 2015 annual statement)
2,000 (2015)
Wintershall Holding GmbH, based in Kassel, is Germany’s largest crude oil and natural gas producer. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of BASF.
The company is active in oil & gas exploration and production, and is thus a traditional E&P company. Wintershall focuses on selected core regions: Europe, North Africa, South America as well as Russia and the Middle East region.
Wintershall employs more than 2,000 people worldwide. In the 2015 financial year the company produced around 153 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe) of oil and gas. Sales were over 12.99 billion euros. Mario Mehren has been CEO of the company since 1 June 2015.
Wintershall was founded on 13 February 1894 by mining entrepreneur . It was originally set up as a drilling company to produce potash in . The company name (pronounced: Winters·hall) is also derived from its founder’s name: it is made up of the surname of Carl Julius Winter and the Old High German word for salt (‘Hall’, see halite, halurgy).
Ground was first broken on 23 April 1900 to drill the Grimberg shaft at Widdershausen, and the first Wintershall potash works were built in Heringen. Wintershall drilled other shafts in the Werra potash fields, and built or acquired other works in the region. From 1895 to 1913, seven potash shafts were drilled in Hessen and 21 in Thuringia in the Werra valley.
In 1930, crude oil production was added to Wintershall’s line of work when a leakage of crude oil into one of the potash shafts in Volkenroda turned out to be a promising prospect for Wintershall. The increasing motorization as well as the subsequent gathering of munitions for the war meant that crude oil was very much in demand. Hence, from then on Wintershall concentrated on developing crude oil resources.
In the 1930s Wintershall acquired Naphthaindustrie und Tankanlagen AG (NITAG) and renamed it NITAG Deutsche Treibstoffe AG in 1938. That made NITAG, alongside Mihag, Wiesöl / Wintershall Mineralöl GmbH the main sales subsidiary for the sale of petroleum products. During World War II forced labor was used, many of the 1360 prisoners came from the Buchenwald concentration camp.
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