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| Home > Topics > Oil > Deutsche Bank and the oil industry |
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Steaua Romana share certificate |
Oil has changed the world and significantly influenced the process of industrialization like no other raw material. The use of oil for production in the chemicals industry created huge economic potential and formed the basis for major change in mass consumerism. Unlike other branches of industry, to secure a supply of private and public energy, nation states have always had a particular interest in the "black gold".
Of course, banks also became involved in the oil industry, requiring as it did, huge amounts of capital. In 1903 Deutsche Bank acquired Steaua Romana, a Romanian oil company which had access to extensive oil deposits in the Eastern and Southern Carpathian Mountains.
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| Arthur von Gwinner and Emil Georg von Stauß |
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Although the company had a good market position in Romania, American companies dictated prices in the export markets and in Germany in particular.
"We were forced to learn that the main difficulty lay not in extracting the oil but in selling it", wrote the Spokesman of the Board of Managing Directors at the time, Arthur von Gwinner, in his memoirs. Nevertheless, "Deutsche Bank ultimately made a lot of money in this business", reminisced Gwinner, adding, however, that as a banker, he personally would never get involved in the oil business again.
The first General Director of Steaua Romana in 1903 was the half-German, half-Russian Georg Spies. Arthur von Gwinner gave him a free rein in the running of the company at the start.
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Steaua Romana's oil field at Moinesti |
However, major differences of opinion subsequently came between the two men and Gwinner backed his secretary, Emil Georg von Stauss to become the top man in Deutsche Bank's oil business: Stauss joined Steaua Romana in 1905, becoming General Director of the company in 1914. He also held the position of Managing Director of the European Petroleum Union and General Director of Deutsche Petroleum-AG. Stauss was appointed member of the Board of Managing Directors of Deutsche Bank in 1915.
By the time World War I broke out in 1914, Steaua Romana had become the largest and most important production plant in Romania. During the war, Romania's oil-producing regions were the subject of political wrangling by second-tier powers and the Ententes.
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| Kaiser Wilhelm II visiting the Campina oil fields in 1917 |
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The end of the First World War likewise meant the end of German oil interests in Romania. Deutsche Bank succeeded in selling its share in Steaua Romana at no loss to a Romanian-French-English banking consortium.
In the 1920s, Deutsche Bank focused its oil interests on Deutsche Petroleum-AG. In order to facilitate uniform operations in the German market which was cut off from most major oil producing regions, Deutsche Bank and Disconto-Gesellschaft resolved in 1922 that Deutsche Petroleum-AG should amalgamate the oil interests of both banks (the banks themselves merged in 1929). OLEX functioned as the sales company; it was entered in the Commercial Register as OLEX Deutsche Petroleum-Verkaufs-Gesellschaft mbH.
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Olex filling station 1925 |
The Anglo-Persian Oil Company - as BP was formerly known - gradually acquired all of Deutsche Petroleum-AG's share capital from 1926 to 1931. With this, the grand era of Deutsche Bank's involvement in the oil industry had come to an end.
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