Poland has shut down a branch of the Druzhba pipeline after detecting a leak, Bloomberg reported on Sunday, citing Polish media and the local firefighting service that responded to the leak report.
The Druzhba pipeline carries Russian crude to Central Europe. Germany buys it in Poland for two of its refineries, one of them formerly owned by Russia’s Rosneft.
Later in the day, Reuters cited Polish pipeline operator PERN as saying the partial shutdown of the pipeline had not affected crude oil deliveries to clients using the Druzhba pipeline.
Central European EU members have been trying to reduce their dependence on Russian crude in the wake of the Ukraine war but this has proven tricky because of the lack of readily available alternatives. One of these has been the replacement of Russian crude flows with Kazakh oil, to feed into Germany’s Schwedt refinery.
This is not the first leak in Druzhba’s Polish section. In August last year, PERN had to shut off a section of the pipeline following the detection of a leak.
The Druzhba pipeline is a key artery of oil supply from Russia to Europe, with two branches – a northern one via Belarus that supplies Belarus, Poland, Germany, Latvia, and Lithuania, and a southern one passing through Ukraine and sending oil to the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Croatia.
Flows through the Druzhba pipeline were exempted from the EU embargo on imports of Russian crude oil by sea that came into effect on December 5, 2022. The EU has exempted pipeline oil flows to landlocked EU member states from the ban.
Nevertheless, Germany and Poland said last year they would halt imports of Russian crude via the Druzhba pipeline as of January 1, 2023. Germany did it on the first day of the year, following through on a previous pledge to stop buying Russian pipeline crude despite the fact that the EU embargo exempts pipeline flows from Russia to Europe. For Hungary and Slovakia, however, Russian oil remains essential.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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Publish date : 2024-12-01 23:40:00
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