Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We're delighted to welcome you to the press conference 2024. We'll present the results of the last business year. We have our CEO, Alfred Stern, as well as our CFO, Reinhard Florey, here. Thank you very much for the large turnout in the virtual space, as well as here in our group headquarters in Vienna. I would like to give the floor, without further ado, to our CEO, Alfred Stern. Alfred Stern, you have the floor.
Thank you, Sylvia. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our annual results press conference. It is a pleasure to welcome you both in our group headquarters in Vienna and online. Today, we are presenting our results for the past financial year 2024. Before we take a detailed look at the business performance, I would like to share some positive news with you. After the exceptional years of 2022 and 2023, 2024 saw the fourth-best results in the history of OMV. We have operated very profitably in a difficult environment, even though we have not quite matched the strong performance of the previous year, 2023. The past year, 2024, was characterized by political and economic volatility. Geopolitical crises and natural disasters affected the reliability of supply chains. The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, unfortunately, continued and impacted the global energy supply.
Conflicts in the Middle East and the Red Sea also influenced geopolitical stability. Furthermore, this persisting high level of inflation in 2024 remained an economic problem in many regions. Falling raw material and energy prices had a significant impact on our business last year, along with a weak economy. At the same time, however, the chemical segment recovered somewhat from the extremely weak year of 2023. The economic conditions were largely characterized by significantly lower market prices. The barrel of Brent crude, on average, was at $81 per barrel, which is 2% below the average price in the reference period of the previous year. The decline in wholesale gas prices was minus 16%, with an average of around 35 EUR per megawatt hour.
In the refining business, the OMV European Refining Indicator margin reached a value of $7.1 per barrel due to lower petrol and middle distillate margins. This was compared to the exceptionally high level of $11.7 per barrel in 2023, which was actually 39% lower than last year. We saw a very positive recovery in the development of the polyolefin business, where margins improved significantly in 2024. Thus, the polyethylene indicator margin in Europe rose by 34% to EUR 432 per ton, while the polypropylene indicator margin in Europe rose by 13%. The polyolefin indicator margins benefited from reduced import volumes to Europe and improved demand. Energy is the elixir of our lives, of our economy and our industry. The secure supply of energy is something that concerns us all.
That is why 2024 was a very special year in which we severed our long-term gas supply contract with Gazprom Export. Due to multiple and serious breaches of contract by Gazprom Export, Russia was no longer a reliable partner for us. It was early in 2022 that we set up a gas task force to develop a clear strategy and then executed it properly. For OMV, the security of supply of our customers is our top priority. OMV is thus opening a new chapter, and it is doing so under its own steam. We now neither have delivery contracts nor any business activities in Russia. The country already ceased to be a core region as early as 2022 for OMV, and we have not made any investments there since then. We are now looking ahead.
Today, after three years of concentrated work of our natural gas task force, we are better positioned than ever before with our successfully diversified natural gas portfolio. We are using our own natural gas production in Norway and Austria, as well as gas volumes produced by third parties in Norway. In addition, we agreed long-term Liquefied Natural Gas supply contracts with our partners, the so-called LNG. In addition, we have access to all important central and northwestern European natural gas trading and capacity markets. The availability of energy also includes its transport. It was therefore important and right that we secured additional pipeline capacities in 2024. With our wide range of offers, we are meeting our responsibility in our domestic market, but also internationally. We are a reliable supplier of affordable energy for our customers.
This is also shown by taking a glance at our gas storage facilities in Austria, which are currently 67% full. Our prosperity, our economy, and our industry depend on the availability of affordable energy. At OMV, we are committed to providing this energy in a safe, affordable, and sustainable way. Stable energy supply promotes growth and helps the economy. It is therefore important to create a fiscal and regulatory environment that supports investment in energy production. The average wholesale gas price in 2024 was still between a third and a quarter of the 2022 level, but of course still higher than before the Russian attack on Ukraine. This is causing considerable difficulties for the economy and for our society. One thing is clear. In recent years, Europe's performance in terms of growth, productivity gains, and innovation has been inadequate by international standards.
We need to catch up, and we need to become competitive again for investments. Energy prices must fall further, and this can only be achieved through greater supply and better availability. Generating our own energy in Europe contributes to the security of supply on our continent. OMV is involved in this, and I would like to give you four examples for that. We are consistently developing our gas fields in Norway. In Norway, together with its partners, OMV could successfully complete the deep-sea exploration drilling Haydn in the Norwegian Sea. It was the largest gas discovery in Norway last year. In Wittau as well, where we made Austria's largest gas discovery in the past 40 years, we want to fully exploit the potential of the field.
Our Romanian subsidiary, OMV Petrom, is investing in Neptun Deep with reserves of around 100 billion cubic meters, which makes it the biggest natural gas development project in the EU. We are convinced that it can make a significant contribution to the security of supply throughout Europe. Neptun Deep will make Romania the biggest natural gas producer in the EU in 2027. The Neptun Deep project satisfies the latest standards and will result in eight times lower CO2 emissions than comparable natural gas production projects on average. This makes sense both environmentally and economically because we assume that by 2050, Europe will still be a net importer of gas, and until then, we will use gas as a bridging technology. We can therefore not afford to exclude any available sources.
At the same time, we are decarbonizing our energy portfolio, and we expect that by 2030, approximately 20% of cash flows of OMV will come from renewables projects. We are, for example, investing in the highly innovative geothermal energy, which produces sustainable district heating, and OMV Petrom is participating in large wind and solar energy projects to capitalize on market opportunities in the field of renewable energies. Ladies and gentlemen, let me now move on to the cumulated results of 2024. Last year, the OMV Group achieved a clean CCS operating result of about EUR 5.1 billion. Even though the clean CCS operating result is around 15% below the strong previous year, it is still the fourth-best result of all comparable periods in the history of OMV.
The group-wide cash flow from operating activities, excluding net working capital last year, was at EUR 5.3 billion, an increase of 14% over the previous year. As a result of this extremely robust cash flow, the company's leverage ratio, including leasing, is low at 12%. This is an expression of our financial strength and the basis of our attractive dividend policy. On the basis of this company's profitability, the management board has decided to propose a regular dividend of EUR 3.05 per share. In addition, there is an additional variable dividend in the amount of EUR 1.70 per share. In total, we want to let our shareholders take part in the company's success with a total amount of EUR 4.75 per share.
This results in a dividend yield of 12.7% on the basis of the share price at the end of last year. I would now like to explain the results in our three business areas in more detail, which together make up the integrated business of OMV. In the chemicals business in 2024, we increased our operating result for special items by EUR 365 million to EUR 459 million. This was mainly due to a significantly higher contribution from Borealis in light of a much stronger polyolefin business and an improved basic chemicals business, and an increased contribution coming from the Borealis joint ventures. The utilization rate of European steam crackers that are operated by OMV and Borealis rose by 5% to 84% in 2024. The chemical sector, in view of the growing world population and the increase of economic prosperity, offers enormous market potential.
In 2024, with our polyolefins, we achieved a 10% increase in sales volumes. At OMV, we firmly expect our chemicals business to continue to take advantage of market opportunities. Ladies and gentlemen, we are working on innovative projects that contribute to our mission statement. We are reinventing the essentials for sustainable living. In 2024, we again achieved major milestones in all three of our business areas. Here are a couple of examples. In the area of chemicals, Borealis announced the construction of a pilot plant for the production of recycled-based polyolefins in Beringen, in Belgium. The state-of-the-art facility will be using the Borcycle M technology developed by Borealis in order to convert mechanically recycled waste into high-quality polypropylene and polyethylene materials. Another innovative initiative is the future cooperation between Borealis, Neste, and Covestro, recycling used tires to produce high-quality plastics.
Together, we are driving the circular economy in the plastics value chain, as well as in the automotive industry. In 2024, OMV and Borealis have concluded long-term raw material supply contracts for their recycling plants with TOMRA Feedstock. This partnership ensures a continuous supply of sustainable and high-quality raw materials. The raw materials delivered by TOMRA will be processed in our new ReOil plant in the Schwechat refinery, while Borealis will use the raw materials produced in the mechanical recycling plants in Europe. Here at OMV, we are proud of our solutions for the circular economy. The basic idea behind this is to convert waste into valuable raw materials. Our ReOil plant enables us to process previously non-recyclable used plastics that would otherwise wind up in landfills or incinerators. With our patented ReOil technology for chemical recycling, we convert this waste into a valuable secondary raw material, namely pyrolysis oil.
This pyrolysis oil is used as a raw material for the production of basic chemicals, which are used in numerous high-quality products in the chemical industry. For example, in food packaging, healthcare, or in the mobility sector. Chemical recycling in the form of ReOil technology is an excellent addition to the existing mechanical recycling technologies. The construction of the new ReOil plant has been completed. The facility is currently in the ramp-up phase. We look forward to completing this process in the coming few months, and we'll give you the opportunity to take a personal look at it, and that brings me to the area of fuels and feedstock. The Clean CCS operating result is down to EUR 927 million. This is mainly due to lower refining reference margins, a lower result from ADNOC refining, as well as a declining contribution from the retail and commercial business.
This was partially offset by lower energy costs and an improved capacity utilization rate at the refineries. Because in the year 2023, there were some turnarounds in the refineries of Petrobrazi and the Schwechat refinery. In the refinery business, the OMV refining indicator margin in Europe fell to $7.1 per barrel. The utilization rate of European refineries in 2024 continued to rise by 2% to 87%. In fuels and feedstock, in June of 2024, we commissioned our co-processing plant in the Schwechat refinery. This plant is a milestone for OMV. With the help of this technology, biogenic raw materials such as domestic rapeseed oil are processed together with fossil raw materials and then converted into high-quality renewable hydrogenated vegetable oil components. Our plant enables the production of up to 135,000 tons of these innovative biofuels per year.
The CO2 footprint of OMV is thus reduced by up to 360,000 tons of fossil CO2 per year, which is equivalent to the emissions of 38,000 cars traveling around the world once. We also received good news from Romania. Our subsidiary, OMV Petrom, took the final investment decision to build a plant for sustainable aviation fuel and HVO diesel and two green hydrogen plants. A total of EUR 750 million will be invested, and OMV Petrom will thus become the first major producer of sustainable fuels in southeastern Europe. We assume that as of 2028, OMV Petrom will be producing around 250,000 tons of renewables per year. Sustainable Aviation Fuel, also referred to as SAF, is a promising growth market. This sustainable aviation fuel helps to reduce CO2 emissions from air traffic by more than 80% compared to conventional kerosene.
By 2030, we want to increase our production of sustainable fuels to 1.5 million tons per year. Sustainable aviation fuels will account for a significant share of these volumes. The increasing demand for mobility with a smaller carbon footprint constitutes the basis of this promising business area. We assume that the demand for sustainable fuels will triple in the coming 20 years. This is also ensured by regulatory and mandatory requirements such as the EU refuel mandates. These are prescribed binding mandatory blending rates of sustainable aviation fuels to conventional kerosene. Since the 1st of January of this year, airlines have to prove a 2% SAF blending quota in order to fulfill the mandate. As of 2030, this mandatory quota will rise to 6%. Since 2022, OMV has been producing SAF in the Schwechat refinery using used cooking oil.
At the Vienna Airport and other airports in central and eastern Europe, we supply major airlines such as Ryanair. We are also working with the aircraft manufacturer Airbus, and we recently signed a partnership agreement with them. Together, we want to make access to sustainable aviation fuel even more efficient for customers. We have taken another important step towards decarbonizing aviation with our OMV SAF Business Solutions. With these SAF certificates, we are helping companies such as Microsoft to achieve their climate targets. In doing so, OMV verifiably transfers the environmental benefits of SAF to a certificate, enabling companies to directly reduce their CO2 footprint. The development of a European electric mobility network with up to 5,000 charging stations by 2030 rounds off our sustainable mobility offering. I will now conclude with the energy division. The clean operating result in 2024 sank to EUR 3.81 billion.
This was primarily due to the strongly negative market effects resulting from the decline in oil and gas prices. The decline in the production rate was somewhat greater than that in sales volumes. Furthermore, negative operating effects resulting from lower production and higher depreciation in Romania affected our results. The total production recorded a slight decline by 7% and was 340,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. The average production costs were at $10 per barrel of oil equivalent. At this point, I would like to emphasize the positive influence of the arbitration award against Gazprom Export on our balance sheet. After taking into account the associated hedging losses, the positive net effect on the operating result before special items in the Q4 of 2024 was around EUR 210 million.
In the energy division, in August of last year, we successfully completed our deep-sea exploration drilling Haydn in the Norwegian Sea. We found gas with an estimated total volume of between 30 and 140 million barrels of oil equivalent. This discovery brings us closer to our goal to increase the share of natural gas in the production portfolio to 60% by 2030. We have achieved important progress in Neptun Deep. In November, the mobile offshore drilling plant arrived in Romania. In a few weeks, it will be transported to the Black Sea. Preparations are currently underway. OMV Petrom is on schedule and has already awarded more than 90% of the execution contracts. In the course of this year, the first drilling will start. According to the current implementation plan, production will start in 2027. Our Wittau gas field in Lower Austria will also be consistently developed.
We assume that through the complete utilization of the discovery, our gas production in Austria can be increased by 50%. Apart from investing in the traditional business, OMV is also investing in climate-neutral forms of energy. OMV Petrom pursues the goal to become a market leader in the energy transition in southeastern Europe and has built up a strong portfolio of wind and solar energy projects. Another good example is our joint venture deep, for which the first of three deep geothermal wells was drilled for a pilot plant in Aspern. By 2028, the energy needs of 20,000 households in Vienna will be provided in a climate-neutral way with district heating. The deep geothermal energy is an important pillar in our strategy and has great potential even beyond Vienna. You can see for yourself. In conclusion, I would like to give you an outlook for the full year 2025.
We are aware that even the best forecasts are subject to many uncertainties in these times. For 2025, we expect an average Brent oil price of around $75 per barrel. For the natural gas wholesale prices, we believe that there will be an average THE price of around 40-45 EUR per megawatt hour. The realized average OMV gas price is estimated to be at around 35 EUR per megawatt hour. The forecast refinery indicator margins in Europe will be at around $6 per barrel for the full year. In the chemicals business, the polyethylene indicator margin and the polypropylene indicator margins in Europe are believed to be about more than 400 EUR per ton. In all three business areas, in 2025, we will continue to invest heavily. Our organic investments in the group in 2025 will amount to about 3.6 billion EUR.
Around EUR 900 million of that will go to the chemicals business, approximately EUR 700 million will be invested in the area of fuels and feedstock, and about EUR 2 billion will be invested in energy. This is how we continue to make our company fit for the future. Ladies and gentlemen, we are on track. We are working hard to position OMV as a leading integrated company for sustainable chemicals, fuels, and energy. The visible sign of this is our claim, Forward for Good, which we launched with our new brand identity with great enthusiasm half a year ago. Forward for Good describes in an exemplary way what our 23,000 employees are committed to day after day. Our brand identity fully reflects the value of our strategy 2030, and it symbolizes our progress towards more sustainability and a circular economy.
We are committed to a world in which sustainable energy, mobility, and lifestyle become a reality for everyone. Step by step, we are moving forward on the path of our responsible transformation. We are looking ahead and seizing the opportunities that arise. We might accelerate our strategy through a potential combination of Borealis and Borouge. I know that you're pursuing this project with great interest. We are still engaged in ongoing and open-ended negotiations with ADNOC. A couple of days ago, we announced that OMV and ADNOC are considering involving Nova Chemicals as part of this potential corporation. A potential merger of Borealis, Borouge, and Nova Chemicals includes the goal of creating a new global corporation for polyolefins with a significant presence in key markets.
Borealis and Borouge could, in the field of polyolefins, that is to say polyethylene and polypropylene, which are the globally most used plastics, could form a leading global provider. Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud how our team OMV is implementing the transformation of our strategy 2030. Our integrated business models with the segments chemicals, fuels, and energy have proven itself in the past financial year in spite of the difficult market environment. We have reached milestones in all strategically relevant areas. We operated in a very difficult environment and operated very profitably. Our cash flow is stable and helps finance our growth projects and our shareholder-friendly dividend policy. Our balance sheet is extremely strong, and our leverage is low. After ending our business relationship with Gazprom, we are opening a new chapter in the company's history.
With a fully diversified gas portfolio, we are in an excellent position, and this guarantees the security of supply for our customers. We will continue to push ahead with our innovation projects in 2025 and use sustainability as a driver of innovation and growth. Thank you for your attention.
All right, thank you very much, Alfred Stern, for your deliberations, and this takes us to the Q&A, and I would like to start with questions here in the room. Maybe you could say which newspaper you're coming from, which medium you're coming from.
I'm from Energie & Management. I think we've known each other for a long time. You said that your production costs have increased by 3% in natural gas. What's the way forward like, and do you think it might go down again? Because it's, of course, not good if these rise continues indefinitely.
Then you talked about the CO2 emissions coming from fossil fuels. These have gone down by 300 million tons of CO2. What about biogenic CO2? That is also increasingly becoming an issue, especially at the EU level.
Well, let me start with the production costs. As many other companies, of course, we are affected by this high rate of inflation, and we are seeing the impact. In the middle of last year, we had announced that we had launched an energy efficiency project where around EUR 500 million of additional cash flow were to be generated by the end of 2027. We are making good progress with this project, and already last year, about EUR 180 million of that had been generated. And we are going to continue with this project in order to steer into calmer waters. Your second question refers to CO2.
Of course, also biogenic fuels, when they are burned, this produces CO2, and thus they contribute to emissions. But the big difference is, of course, that when it comes to fossil fuels, we are using raw materials that have been in the subsoil for millions of years, and thus they had sequestered CO2. Whereas biogenic fuels and oils initially remove CO2 from the atmosphere to grow, and that is the benefit, so this is a circular economy, and this is why there are different types of accounting for the different types of CO2 emissions, and that is being recognized. Apologies. Please wait for the microphone. At the European level, there are discussions that this might change and that biogenic CO2 should be dealt with no differently than fossil CO2 emissions, so that is currently being discussed. Of course, we are sticking to the various rules and regulatory frameworks.
I can only talk about what is the current status, and you will have seen that we are also investing into charging stations for e-mobility. But it's, of course, a fact that it is difficult. There are areas that are hard to electrify, such as air traffic, shipping, or heavy goods transport, where we also have to come up with alternatives. I think it is safe to say that the EU's regulations tend to prefer biogenic CO2. You can tell by looking at the sustainable aviation fuels, where there's a minimum of biogenic fuels that is mandatory, and there are penalties if this blending in quota is not achieved, and this is why sustainable aviation fuel is so lucrative for us to produce, because there's a premium involved, and that's a business model that is promoted by the European Union, and we're using that. Thank you.
Jonathan Tyce from Bloomberg.
Good morning, Jonathan Tyce. I have two questions. One, for the Austrian gas market, the gas flows through Germany and Italy have increased, but it is only around 50 terawatt hours per year. Do you expect these flows to increase in the second and third quarter, or do you expect the Austrian gas demand to go down again this year?
That is really the case. In 2024, we saw that the demand for electricity went up slightly. At the same time, there was a decline in the demand for natural gas, and I think that what you are referring to is due to the fact that the gas storage filling levels are very high in Austria, and due to the summer-winter spreads that form, it is currently reasonable to use gas from our storage, and the gas flows coming from Germany and Italy are a result of that.
So in the free gas markets, this is a mechanism that is well established. And of course, in this summer, we will be filling the storage again, and we will see how that progresses. Currently, the summer-winter spreads are negative. So this will certainly lead to a situation that deviates from what we used to see in the past. Because in addition to the market dynamic, we are also seeing a regulatory dynamic on top of that, because there's an obligation to fill the gas storage facilities to a certain level. This is something that we are working on consistently. And the second question, I'll ask it in English.
In the last 18 months, you've been telling us, communicating to us that a possible fusion with Borouge would be conducted auf Augenhöhe. But now that Nova is also in the discussions, this is another 100%-owned company of the Emirati state.
And so it is difficult to envision how you can conduct a merger of equals when you're dealing with Borouge, a 100% ward of the Emiratis, and Nova, also a 100% ward of the Emiratis. Can you explain what's going on here, and do you now expect to have a larger cash contribution in order to remain an equal in this transaction?
Okay. Yeah, okay. So Jonathan, I can confirm to you what we have always been saying along the whole time, that what we announced some time ago is that we are looking at the potential combination of Borouge and Borealis at equal shares and as equal partners. And that this combination of Borouge and Borealis should be a growth platform in the polyolefin market. Yeah? And this is, and nothing has changed. I have not changed my statement in this.
So I can confirm to you what we are doing is a potential combination of Borouge and Borealis on equal shares and equal partnership basis. And we want that to be a growth platform, not just to combine the two. Now that we are considering that Nova Chemicals, what we confirmed last Friday, may become a potential part of that transaction, does not change anything. It's also, of course, dependent on many things. And as you will appreciate, since we are in ongoing negotiations, I will not speculate about any of the conditions of such a transaction. Vielen Dank.
Thank you very much. There is one more question from the virtual space from Michaela Seiser from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper. The question is, to what extent have the negotiations on this alliance between Borouge and Borealis progressed? And when do you think these negotiations will be completed?
The negotiations continue with open-ended results, and we are conducting these negotiations in the interest of all our shareholders and the employees of OMV. So we'll continue that. We have never announced any particular point of time when these will be completed, and I'm not going to do so now.
Ivan Novak from APA, Austrian Press Agency. Mr. Stern, you emphasized repeatedly the importance of affordable energy. Europe's industry is subject to a major crisis, and one of the reasons is that energy is much more expensive than in our competitors' countries. I think we are paying four times as much for natural gas than people pay in the US Why is natural gas so much more expensive? Is it the transport of LNG to Europe that makes it so much more expensive?
Energy on the whole, but especially natural gas that you are referring to here. After the deregulation of the gas markets, the prices in European markets adapted to the trading hubs that supply and demand. So the higher the gas prices are, well, there's a lack of supply at a constant amount. And I believe that that is the result of us not having created enough incentives to invest. That regulatory and fiscal boundary conditions in Europe are not good enough in order to bring additional gas volumes here. No gas sources should be left unused. That means we also need to have domestic production. Domestic production here in Austria, but also in the EU, such as Neptun Deep or Wittau or production in Norway. So in and around Europe, we need to increase the supply of gas.
And I believe that on account of the special situation that we have encountered in the past three years, of course, there was a certain justification for levying certain fees. But anyway, I believe that additional taxes and contributions cannot help lower energy prices. We can only lower energy prices by investing more in all forms of energy generation.
Thank you.
Next question on the right. Relios from Energy Vision Magazine.
First and foremost, I would like to congratulate OMV on the new logo, the new brand appearance, the brand identity, moving from just words to words and pictures. The logo is very creative, and I think this is something that people will remember. Now my question, Director General, in an interview with the newspaper Der Standard in Davos, Switzerland, you said that energy is the elixir and the lifeblood of our economies.
My question is, are there any other energy visions that you have for the future? For example, hydrogen. Green hydrogen is talked about everywhere, so where is the know-how to get green hydrogen from?
Thank you for the question, and thank you for this praise that I will share with our employees who have implemented these projects. As to your question, are there any other ideas or visions? Well, I believe that what makes a strategy successful is that you need to focus on a few things. And it is quite clear that we are going to initially continue with our core business and try to make sure that we continue to provide a good security of supply for our customers for natural gas.
This is why we have Wittau, Neptun, and other projects in Norway that help us to use what's available to us, because technologies for alternative energy sources also need to develop further. And until we get there, we'll use natural gas as a bridging technology. That doesn't mean that we don't recognize that we need to move and invest in alternative sources of energy as quickly as possible. But energy is an important part of our lives. And as far as our lighthouse projects are concerned, the focus areas, well, I mentioned them. We believe that heating is very important. And we need to, well, today we produce a high-quality energy source and the gas that burns at high temperatures to heat our homes. So the efficiency isn't so good, and we can better use geothermal energy. This is also more ecological. So we'll continue to invest there.
And in the area of sustainable fuels, we see a lot of opportunities arising. Reinhard mentioned it, especially where industries are hard to electrify. We're going to continue to invest. And as to your question concerning hydrogen, here at OMV, the way we proceed is that we use green hydrogen for the decarbonization of our refinery and to produce sustainable fuels. We need significant volumes of green hydrogen. However, hydrogen as an energy source to heat homes, etc., is simply too expensive. So we need to find other alternative forms of energy. So we'll invest in those areas where hydrogen can be used to decarbonize and replace liquid fuels. Here in Vienna, we have built an electrolyzer that we are ramping up. It's a small electrolyzer. And we also have the green light for two large electrolyzers in Romania. And we are also looking at another project here in Austria.
Thank you. We have one more question from the chat on a current topic, coming from Isabel Demert from Thomson Reuters. What effects could US tariffs have on OMV, if any?
Well, we are hearing various news on US tariffs, quite diverse news. Last night, we heard that the tariffs levied against Canada and Mexico might be suspended for 30 days, or will be suspended for 30 days to enable negotiations. So we see it's an economic power game. And the new Trump administration is using these games. And this is also going to affect Europe. So there will have to be negotiations. There will have to be an economic equilibrium. OMV is currently affected in a few areas by these tariffs. If you think about North America, we have a very small exposure.
But this exposure is related to activities that are in the US themselves and that affect the national market. So tariffs will not help because we are in the US market there. Then there's other tariffs against Europe, well, for chemicals products. And we must not forget that Borealis is also an exporter. So the exports of Borealis to the US are not a lot. So this is not the primary focus. So what this is about is to see how tariffs will affect inflation. And that is something that the economies will have to think about. Because if you increase prices on the one hand by making price markups, and if you suppress global trade, what this will lead to is that inflation will go up. And this has to be fought by all means because that will lead to higher costs.
And that can also lead to higher energy costs. And that would, of course, be a positive impact on us. But we don't want that. As Alfred Stern said, we want energy prices to go down. We want energy to remain affordable. And this is why we need to come up with reasonable solutions at the macroeconomic level.
Thank you. The next question comes from the room here, Mr. Strobl from Der Standard newspaper.
Hello. I have a question on gas and the US What I would like to know is how much LNG did OMV order, how much of that coming from the US, and if Donald Trump says Europe should buy more LNG in order to avoid tariffs. Well, do you feel you should do this? I know with Cheniere Energy, you've concluded long-term supply contracts, but these will only apply at the end of 2029.
I have another question on Neptun Deep. What is the gas volume that we can expect as of 2027 to be produced there?
Let me start with Neptun Deep. I think that's easy to answer. Like I said, we have about 100 billion cubic meters of reserves there. We believe that we can produce for 10 years there at a certain level. Of course, there will be ramp-up and ramp-down. It will be between 7 to 9 million cubic meters per year. Your second question, a question concerning US gas. Like I said, I believe that we have a better gas portfolio than previously because we diversified our gas portfolio. In recent months, we announced that we have concluded a contract with Cheniere, and we also have an agreement with BP.
So we have diversified our portfolios that all our contracts are with non-Russian LNG providers because we believe that this would help diversify our portfolio. Even though the Gazprom contracts were resiliated at the end of last year, it is still the case that our work is not over, of course. And we need to continue to diversify our supply sources and find additional new sources. And in the US, it was said that the stop of liquefaction capacities has been overcome. That's positive news. And we will certainly position ourselves in a way to get the best procurement conditions. But of course, we also need to diversify. So we cannot rely on a single source or a single region in the future.
Another question from Mr. Strobl.
Have you already ordered LNG from the US for this year? And as far as the arbitration against Gazprom is concerned, you talked about EUR 10 million net inflow, I think a total of EUR 230 million. So did you get the full amount from this award? Because you exchanged volumes for money, or is there some part of this payment still missing and outstanding?
Yes. This is not something that we have just started now. This is a three-year journey that we embarked upon, where we diversified our portfolio, where we made sure that all the supplies would be available, that we get the LNG capacities at the gate terminal. But please understand that our detailed trading strategy cannot be disclosed here because that's a business secret. And I think we need to keep this. Of course, we have booked pipeline capacities as well as gas volumes.
But the way we invoice this and the claims for damages, I think Reinhard is in a better position to explain that, well, we said that through our profit and loss statement, more than EUR 230 million of positive effects was in our books in December of last year. And then there's a smaller part that is not covered by the first supply, but by the subsequent supply to the amount of EUR 50 million that was booked as a receivable. And we booked this in January. So the entire amount of the award has now been paid.
And that's remarkable because this is the first time that a company has prevailed against a big Russian company. And so we received a full amount. And this is not a reward for OMV. This is just a claim for damages and losses incurred. But we received it, and we could fully invoice it.
Okay, we have time for one short last question. Here in the front, next to Mr. Strobl, Yamgert from the Börsianer, and the report publishers.
I want to ask a question on LNG. You named two suppliers. Where else do you get LNG from? And will we get LNG supplies this year?
Well, it's not only that we're going to get LNG this year. Actually, in previous years, we already received LNG. Maybe Reinhard can explain. But if you look back historically, you will see that our capacities at the Gate LNG terminal were not really very successful business-wise. And in recent years, of course, it turned out that it had been good to have these capacities booked because in recent years, we were able to use them.
This helped generate a positive contribution to our business results for a simple reason, namely that we could use the capacities and will continue to use these terminal capacities accordingly to bring in LNG. Again, this is very complex. Sometimes these are long-term supply contracts that we are engaged in. Sometimes it is trading on the global markets. It is a mix of portfolio activities that affect our gas marketing and trading business. We've conducted this in a very professional way with decades of experience. I have a short question. LNG is more expensive than the gas that we had previously. What is the gas price you're counting on? I think your own production won't be any cheaper either. For the year 2025, we believe that the THE price, so the German hub, will be around EUR 40-45 per megawatt hour.
That's a bit higher than the average of the last year, where it was 35 EUR per megawatt hour. But I do want to clearly point out that the gas market is subject to free market economy principles. So it's not cost-plus prices that we're invoicing, but the gas prices are formed in the market as a result of supply and demand. So I believe it is important to state that we need more supply here in Europe to help lower prices. What makes this harder is that pipeline gas coming from Russia couldn't go anywhere else in the past. The LNG ships, of course, can go where the highest prices are being paid. So the price and pricing mechanism in Europe has changed. But this has nothing to do with the fact that one sort of gas is more expensive than the other.
So in the European market, the prices are formed based on supply and demand. And this is why we need to promote our own production, that we diversify our sources, that we make everything available in and around Europe through pipelines in order to be able to increase the supply here in Europe.
Thank you, Alfred Stern. Thank you, Reinhard Flore. I would like to thank you for participating in this webcast. Unfortunately, we couldn't answer all questions, but the media relations team will be available in the coming hours for your questions. Thank you very much, and see you next time. Bye-bye. Thank you.