Poland Still Supports Ukraine’s Oil Pipeline

During a visit to Azerbaijan Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski declared that the Odessa-Brody-Gdansk crude oil pipeline project was still realistic while Azeri President Ilhman Aliyev said that Azerbaijan had gas and oil pipelines but their capacity was not fully used.

In 2002 the Ukrainian government built the Odessa–Brody pipeline between the Ukrainian cities of Odessa at the Black Sea and Brody near the Ukrainian-Polish border in the hopes that it would attract throughput from the rising volumes of Caspian oil to be exported westwards to eastern and Central Europe. The pipeline has struggled to find users ever since. The possible extension of the Odessa-Brody pipeline was on the agenda of talks between Komorowski and Alijev

Komorowski said, "Poland is still interested in the construction of transport systems that could help solve Poland's energy problems and that could become significant solutions for the entire European Union. The Azeri crude oil is already near our borders and one should make it help solve problems of our region in Europe," the Polska Agencja Prasowa news agency reported.

Komorowski told journalists that extending the Odessa - Brody pipeline into Poland was a business as much as a political decision but that considerable investment in infrastructure would have to take place before the plan is realized.

By. Joao Peixe, Deputy Editor OilPrice.com