DEA Deutsche Erdoel : turns 120

In 1988 Texaco sold DEA to RWE. In the downstream business, RWE Dea reached the size of its most important competitors. Since Germany's E&P companies had insufficient international leverage, a joint venture of national players was formed by Wintershall, Veba Oil and RWE Dea called Deminex. In 1990, the shares in DEMINEX increased DEA's crude oil production by nearly 6.9 million barrels, resulting in RWE Dea having an annual production of nearly 28 million barrels of crude oil. In 1998, DEMINEX was dissolved, with RWE Dea receiving the Egyptian and Norwegian assets of DEMINEX.

In the following years additional reserves were developed in the North Sea as well as, the Akshabulak crude oil reservoir in Kazakhstan being added in 1997.

The share of natural gas production increased steadily. Due to significant exploration successes in Lower Saxony, RWE Dea's share of natural gas production in Germany rose from 3 percent to 8.5 percent in about 10 years. Natural gas storage also become an important business for ​​the company.

In 1989, the petrol station brand DEA was established, and 1,400 former Texaco petrol stations converted to the new DEA brand. Sales of gasoline, diesel, heating oil, lubricants and aviation turbine fuel doubled, from 70.6 million barrels in 1988, to 150 million barrels in 1998.

1986 saw RWE Dea acquiring 100 percent of its joint venture chemical company CONDEA. Then in 1991, Vista Chemical Company, a mid-sized US company with $ 700 million in annual revenue and 1,850 employees was acquired. A year later in 1992, the acquisition of a leading Italian producer of ingredients for the detergent and cosmetics industries, Domenico Altieri Chimiche followed.

At the end of the 1990's, RWE Dea's Chemicals business employed about half of the approximately 10,250 RWE Dea employees.

With the opening of Eastern Europe, RWE Dea expanded its petrol station network east of the Elbe and expanded to Poland and the Czech Republic, as well as in 1991, becoming a shareholder in the PCK refinery in Schwedt, on the banks river Oder.

In 2001 and 2002 RWE Dea again refocussed its business to its core upstream strengths and merged the downstream business with Shell and sold its chemical business to the South African company Sasol.