Uniper Exits North American Power Market

Uniper SE has completed the divestment of its North American power portfolio, toward the satisfaction of fair-competition guardrails imposed by the European Commission in approving the gas and power utility’s bail-out by the German government in 2022.

The divestment covered “power purchase and sale contracts and energy management agreements in the North American power markets ERCOT (North, South, West and Houston), WEST (WECC and CAISO) and CENTRAL (MISO and SPP) through a number of transactions with several counterparties”, Uniper said in an online statement. It did not name its buyers.

The North American dispositions exclude Uniper’s gas portfolio and hydrogen-related activities, according to information on the company’s website.

“The divestment of the North America power portfolio is part of the conditions that Uniper must fulfill pursuant to the EU state decision”, Uniper said announcing the completion of the sales.

It initiated the North American portion of the bailout-related divestments in 2023. In its financial report for that year, Uniper said about the North American electricity stakes to be offloaded, “The major derivative asset and liability items of the disposal group are non-current assets (EUR 210 million) and current assets (EUR 73 million), as well as liabilities (EUR 52 million), and are measured at fair value”.

“Until the transaction closes, contracts are still being realized in part, and the assets and liabilities will continue to be measured at fair value”, it said then. Uniper has yet to release its annual report for 2024.

On January 7, 2025, Uniper said it had completed the sale of a natural gas-fired power plant in Gönyu, Hungary, to the local subsidiary of France’s Veolia SA toward the fulfillment of the bail-out conditions. Commissioned 2011, the power plant generates up to 430 megawatts, according to Uniper.

The new owner is Veolia Invest Hungary Zrt. Uniper and Veolia had agreed not to disclose the financial terms of the transaction, according to the announcement of the sale agreement February 19, 2024.

In another sale under the bailout conditions, Uniper announced December 10, 2024, the launch of bidding for its 18.26 percent stake in AS Latvijas Gaze, which is involved in natural gas trading and sales to Baltic consumers primarily in Latvia.

In late 2022 the German government took over about 99 percent of Uniper’s shareholding and agreed to a capital injection of EUR 25 billion ($25.95 billion). The state’s takeover from ex-majority owner Fortum Oyj served to prevent Uniper from collapsing from war-induced losses including from the purchase of substitute natural gas after Russia’s Gazprom PJSC purportedly failed to deliver contracted supply from mid-2022, according to online information from Uniper.

For the bailout to satisfy EU state aid rules, Uniper agreed to several divestments that must be completed by 2026.

The other assets in the divestment package are an 84 percent stake in Unipro in Russia, a 20 percent stake in the OPAL pipeline, a 20 percent indirect stake in the BBL pipeline, a hard coal-fired power plant in Germany, Uniper’s German district heating business, its Middle Eastern marine fuels unit Uniper Energy DMCC and its international helium business, Uniper says on its website.

The German government also committed to cutting its stake to a maximum of 25 percent plus one share by 2028 at the latest.

Additionally, “until the end of 2026, Uniper will be prevented from acquiring a stake in other companies, unless this is essential to ensure its long-term viability”, the European Commission said in an online statement December 20, 2022.

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