Repsol shakes off its oil company image and becomes an electricity provider

REPSOL, Spain’s largest oil company, is now providing electricity for just over one million customers.

It acquired 50.01 per cent of the country’s seventh-largest electricity company, CHC Energia, and another 356,000 customers, after CIDE Servicios Comerciales, which owns 100 per cent of CHC Energia, approved the sale on May 9.

The CHC operation was Repsol’s largest in the electricity sector since acquiring Viesgo – and more than 750,000 customers – five years ago in an operation valued at more than €730 million.

That was followed by Gana Energía – in which Mercadona chairman Juan Roig was a shareholder – that brought Repsol 37,000 more customers and another €25 million in turnover in 2021.

Repsol then went on to secure the Capital Energy’s portfolio of a further 25,000 contracts at the beginning of 2022.

The company’s quota of the energy market has now increased from 4.9 per cent to 6.6 per cent, in fourth place after Iberdrola, Endesa and Naturgy.

The CHC transaction comes at a time when Repsol, along with its competitors, wants to divest itself of its oil company label.

Instead, it aims to become a multi-energy company with interests that reach far beyond fossil fuels and produce net zero emissions by the middle of the century.