“The supply of Russian and Kazakh oil to Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Germany through the Druzhba pipeline has stopped since Thursday due to technical problems at the Russian pumping station.”, — write: epravda.com.ua
The supply of Russian and Kazakh oil to Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Germany through the Druzhba pipeline has been stopped since Thursday due to technical problems at the Russian pumping station. This is reported by the Reuters agency. The pipeline, one of the world’s largest with a capacity of 2 million barrels per day, remains the last major artery connecting Russian oil fields to European refineries after EU governments cut dependence on Russian gas. The Belarusian concern “Belneftekhim” confirmed the violation in the supply of oil through “Druzhba” in a comment to the “BelTA” agency and stated that Belarusian oil refineries use the stored volumes of oil to support their work. Advertisement: Sources who wished to remain anonymous, as they are not authorized to make public statement, reported that “Transneft” discovered a problem at the pumping station in Unech, in the Bryansk region of Russia, approximately 70 km from the border with Belarus. Before the shutdown, the pipeline transported 300,000 barrels per day. Sources said the outages affected supplies of Russian oil to Belarus and EU countries, while shipments from Russia’s western ports of Novorossiysk, Ust-Luga and Primorsk remained unchanged. One source suggested that oil could be diverted from Druzhba to the ports.Advertisement: Another source said the problem could be resolved within days, while a third said supplies would be suspended until the end of the month. Hungary’s MOL, which needs the oil for its refineries, said on Friday it had information that supplies could resume in a few days and that the disruptions would not affect the region’s energy security. The spokesman of the Czech oil refinery Orlen Unipetrol noted that “the supply of crude oil through the Druzhba pipeline is currently not interrupted.”