Germany’s Wintershall Dea and Austria’s OMV are being stripped of their multi-billion-dollar stakes in joint ventures developing natural gas projects in Russia under a decree by Vladimir Putin. The Russian president has signed a decree ordering that the shares of the two Western energy companies in the Yuzhno-Russkoye field and in the Achimov projects in Russia’s Arctic be transferred to newly set up Russian firms. OMV and Germany’s BASF and its joint venture with LetterOne, Wintershall Dea, held minority stakes in…
