4,200,000,000 cubic metres of gas are held in the WINGAS natural gas storage facility in Rehden - the largest of its kind in Western Europe.

2,000,000 tonnes of oil were produced in 2002 by the Mittelplate consortium that consists of operator RWE Dea AG and Wintershall AG (50 per cent stake each). Mittelplate is undoubtedly Germany's largest crude oil reservoir in the Tidal Flats offshore the west coast of Schleswig-Holstein. Total production already amounts to more than 10 million tonnes of oil.

10,000 units of processing data or more per hour are relayed by fibre optic to the WINGAS Dispatching Centre in Kassel. This centre controls and monitors Wintershall's state-of-the-art gas pipeline network.

2,900 metres from the surface of the water to the sea bed a well was drilled by Wintershall in a joint venture with Shell, offshore Brazil.

1,537 personnel are employed by Wintershall. Their outstanding efforts provided the basis for last year's success.

1,214 metres is the height above sea level of the Fichtelberg mountain (Oberwiesenthal/Erzgebirge) - the location of Germany's highest natural gas connection. This pipeline belongs to Erdgas/South Saxony in Chemnitz, a WINGAS customer.

300 kilometres offshore of the Continental Shelf in the German sector of the North Sea is Germany's most important gas exploration area - the Entenschnabel (or "Duck's Bill"). It was developed by the four partners of the German North Sea Consortium - BEB Erdgas und Erdöl GmbH, EWE AG, RWE Dea AG and Wintershall AG as operator.


44 per cent is our success rate for discoveries in our exploration drilling for new deposits and expanding previous reservoirs during the past business year. This rate is significantly higher than the industry average of between 15 to 30 per cent.

30 nationalities from five continents make up Wintershall's diverse workforce. They include employees from Argentina, USA, Canada, Australia, Azerbaidzhan, Malaysia, Venezuela, Libya, the Russian Federation and the Netherlands.

20 per cent of Germany's total stored natural gas volume can be held at the Rehden natural gas storage facility.


8.7 million tonnes of crude oil have been produced by Wintershall in the Barnstorf area over the last 50 years. The crude is transported by rail tank cars to refineries in Salzbergen and Lingen. The amount produced so far is equal to a train stretching from Barnstorf to Sicily in a straight line.

6 new oil and gas fields were discovered in the Dutch sector of the North Sea, Argentina, Romania and Libya in 2002.

5 countries and Wintershall sites were visited by the young Berlin-based artist Oliver Helbig. During these visits he took photographs showing his own unique impressions of our sites, presenting them as small dots on much wider landscapes.

3 per cent increase in natural gas production to 2.3 billion cubic metres was achieved by Wintershall AG, despite the current difficult economic situation in Argentina.

1st place for Wintershall in crude oil production in Germany.

0 occurrences of environmental damage, despite increased production, during the last 15 years' production at the Mittelplate rig, operated jointly by Wintershall and RWE Dea. In addition, regular examinations by the supervisory authorities prove that neither the Tidal Flats' flora nor fauna has been adversely affected by the operations.

- 50 degrees Celsius is the extremely cold temperature that the pipelines of Gazprom, Wintershall's partner, have to withstand in Western Siberia to provide us with natural gas and welcome heat in our latitudes.