The UK wants to block the sale of RWE DEA to Russia

In March 2014 RWE planned to sell its subsidiary, RWE DEA, to a Russian investment fund, LetterOne for 5.1 billion euros. According to the Financial Times (16 October 2014) this transaction may be blocked by the UK government, which is the owner of all the natural resources in the UK and makes decisions about granting concessions for mining British resources. The Hungarian company MOL – which is one of the companies interested in buying RWE DEA - expressed its was willing to resume talks on taking over the company the same day.

RWE DEA extracts gas and produces oil and gas in 17 countries across the world (including Germany, the UK, Poland, Libya and Egypt). It extracts approximately 58% of its gas and 35% of its oil is in Germany. A further 14% of the company gas production is extracts in the UK. The company has 1,400 employees. Last year it registered sales of 2.1 billion euros and profits of 0.9 billion euros.