Olaf Scholz announces bailout for Germany’s largest Russian gas importer

theguardian.com:

Germany has forged a plan to save its largest importer of Russian gas from bankruptcy amid huge energy price increases, the government has confirmed.

The chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said the government would take a 30% stake in the energy firm Uniper and also vowed more help would be offered to ordinary people who were struggling to cover soaring energy bills, adopting a new crisis slogan addressed to the public: “You’ll never walk alone.”

Scholz admitted the scale of the crisis that Germany finds itself in as it struggles to cope with a drastic reduction in Russian gas supplies at the same time as trying to rapidly diversify its energy provision and decrease its dependency on Moscow. Since the start of the Ukraine invasion it has cut its reliance on Russian gas from 55% to 26%, according to the economy ministry.

Interrupting his holiday for a hurriedly-called news conference in Berlin, Scholz said his government would be making €7.7bn (£6.5bn) available as hybrid capital to Uniper, as well as extending a €9bn credit line to the company via the state-run bank KfW.

The economy minister, Robert Habeck, has characterised the move, which the government and industry insiders hinted at for weeks, as an attempt to avert a “Lehman Brothers-style crisis”. It came a day after Russia switched the main natural gas pipeline between it and Germany back on after scheduled maintenance works, but only released 40% of the capacity flow.

The business world, led by the German association of industry BDI, reiterated Habeck’s warning on Thursday that the flow of gas was inadequate and too unpredictable for Germany and could yet be turned off altogether. Habeck stressed the urgency of making contingency plans to save gas before the winter, announcing