Ørsted

Origin

Ørsted has its origin in the Danish state-owned company Dansk Naturgas A/S. The company was founded in 1972 to manage gas and oil resources in the Danish sector of the North Sea. After some years, the company was renamed to Dansk Olie og Naturgas A/S (DONG), meaning Danish Oil and Natural Gas. At the beginning of the decade of the 2000s, DONG started to expand itself into the electricity market by taking long positions in electricity companies. In 2005, DONG acquired and merged Danish electrical power producers Elsam and Energi E2 and public utility (electricity distribution) companies NESA, Københavns Energi and Frederiksberg Forsyning. The result of the merger was the creation of DONG Energy. The merger was approved by the European Commission on 14 March 2006. In 2002 Elsam had installed the 160 MW Horns Rev offshore wind farm, which was the first large-scale offshore wind farm in the world.

In 2005, DONG Energy acquired 10.34% in the Ormen Lange gas field (operated by Shell). The share of gas reserves allocated to DONG Energy are approximately 40 billion cubic metres (1.4 trillion cubic feet).

The following year, DONG entered a 20-year contract for one billion cubic meters of natural gas per year from 2011, from Gazprom in Russia through Nord Stream 1 and Germany. The deal included that DONG delivers 600 million cubic meters per year (for 15 years) from the Ormen Lange gas field to Gazprom in United Kingdom.

In 2007, DONG and Wingas (partly owned by Gazprom) agreed to a gas swap, where DONG delivers gas to Wingas UK, while Wingas delivers the same amount to DONG in North Germany. The deal was criticized as "damaging to European interests".

Use of fossil fuels