Kazakh Oil Starts Flowing To Germany Via Russian Pipeline Network

Crude oil from Kazakhstan started flowing via the Russian pipeline network to Poland for further delivery to Germany, Russian pipeline monopoly operator Transneft said on Monday.  

Kazakh crude oil began flowing to Germany via transit through Poland, Transneft’s representative Igor Demin told Russian news agency TASS.

This weekend, Kazakhstan’s oil pipeline operator KazTransOil delivered 20,000 tons of Kazakhstani oil to Transneft’s system of oil pipelines in the direction of the Adamova Zastava oil delivery point for further transit to Germany, the company said on Monday.

In December 2022, KazTransOil applied to transport a total of 1.2 million tons of Kazakh crude oil through Transneft’s system of trunk oil pipelines in the direction of the Adamova Zastava point for further delivery to Germany, the Kazakh firm said today. 

Meanwhile, crude oil deliveries from Russia to Poland were suspended, Russian media reported. Russia claims that incomplete paperwork prevented the supply of Russian oil to Poland, and Polish refineries were cut off.

According to a Transneft spokesperson, crude oil should have been delivered to Polish refineries in the second half of February, but “routing orders with confirmed resource and transit payment were not executed,” as carried by Russian media.

“In addition, operational changes were made to the schedule, excluding supplies for Polish consumers,” Transneft noted.

Poland’s top refiner, PKN Orlen, said this weekend that it had stopped receiving oil from Russia via the Druzhba pipeline. Orlen said it had prepared for such a scenario, and consumers would not be impacted.

Germany halted imports of Russian oil via pipeline on January 1, 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.   

The EU embargo on imports of Russian crude oil by sea came into effect on December 5, but pipeline oil flows to landlocked EU member states are exempt from the ban.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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