Carl Julius Winter and Heinrich Grimberg establish the drilling company Wintershall and in its early years, the company produces potassium salt.

In 1930, oil accidentally leaks into a potash mining shaft which quickly opens up new and exciting prospects for the future. Less than a year later, crude oil production is added into Wintershall’s areas of operations.

Wintershall makes its first natural gas discovery in the Grafschaft Bentheim district.

The company establishes the Wintershall oil and gas production facility at the new Barnstorf location and rapidly grows its workforce to 1,600 employees.

Wintershall becomes part of BASF AG, Ludwigshafen and immediately becomes the company's largest European subsidiary. For the parent company, Wintershall represents an important supplier of raw materials and a key component of its resource security strategy.

Wintershall's activities focus on oil and gas.

Wintershall signs a long-term agreement with OAO Gazprom, the world's largest gas producer, to market Russian gas in Western and Eastern Europe.

WINGAS is established as a natural gas trading company held jointly with Gazprom. The company supplies gas to municipal utilities, regional gas suppliers, industrial companies, and power stations in Germany and other Western European countries.

Wintershall and Gazprom agree to jointly produce oil and gas in Russia as well as in other countries. At the same time Wintershall withdraws from its refinery activities.

The acquisition of the Dutch company Clyde makes Wintershall one of the largest natural gas producers in the southern sector of the North Sea.

The world's Southernmost gas platform is commissioned in Argentina. This is the largest offshore project to date for the production of hydrocarbons in Argentina.

Wintershall and Gazprom start drilling in Western Siberia due to the signing of the Achimgaz joint venture. The drilling will produce gas from a section of the Achimov formation, in the Siberian Urengoy field. The official start-up follows rapidly in 2008.

A state-of-the-art platform control center on the mainland uses radio to monitor the production of over 15 offshore platforms in the Dutch sector of the North Sea. The Russian Yuzhno Russkoye gas field comes on stream. Wintershall is the first German company to produce natural gas jointly with Gazprom in Siberia.

At the end of 2008, after the successful acquisition of the Norwegian company Revus Engergy ASA, the first self-operated wells off the coast of Norway and Great Britain quickly produce good results and oil discoveries.