Poland and Germany ask for Russian oil

Companies from Poland and Germany applied forTransneft” for oil supplies via the northern branch of the Druzhba pipeline in 2023. Nikolai Tokarev, chairman of the board of the company, spoke about this in an interview with the Rossiya 24 TV channel on December 20. Applications came after the authorities of these countries announced plans to abandon Russian pipeline oil.

“They announced that they would not take oil from Russia from January 1. And now we have received applications from Polish consumers: give us 3 million tons next year, and 360,000 tons for December, and Germany has already submitted an application for the first quarter – give it too,” Tokarev said.

According to Vedomosti sources familiar with the statistics of the Ministry of Energy, in November 2022, Poland imported 450,000 tons of oil via Druzhba, and 8.25 million tons in 11 months of 2022. For the entire 2021, deliveries to Poland through the pipeline amounted to 8.4 million tons.

Germany imported 4.86 million tons of oil via this route in the first quarter of 2022, and 14.1 million tons in 11 months. Oil supplies via Druzhba to Germany in the first quarter of pre-crisis 2021 amounted to 4 million tons, the expert notes Institute for the Development of Fuel and Energy Complex Technologies Kirill Rodionov. For the whole of 2021, Germany imported 24.2 million tons of oil from Russia, of which 70%, or 17 million tons, went through Druzhba.

The Druzhba oil pipeline was built in the 1960s. It starts in the Samara region, passes through Bryansk and then splits into northern and southern branches. The northern branch goes through Belarus to Poland and Germany, the southern branch goes through Ukraine to Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary. According to Transneft, in 2021, 35.9 million tons of oil were delivered to non-CIS countries via Druzhba.

Tokarev noted that deliveries via the southern branch of Druzhba to Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary will remain the same – about 12 million tons per year, because these countries have been exempted from EU sanctions. “As for the northern one, we are calculating all the options, we have options A, B, C. The circumstances are such that it is quite difficult to predict the situation next year,” he added.

The top manager noted that technically, oil from Kazakhstan can partially replace Russian oil in supplies via Druzhba to Germany, but there is a “political component”. “If they don’t want to receive Russian oil from the pipeline, then why should we help support the economy of an unfriendly country? That is, this is already politics, and the decision is not ours,” he stressed. In September 2022, the German authorities announced that they would turn to the authorities of Kazakhstan with a request to supply their oil to Germany through Druzhba.

In the press service of the Ministry of Energy, Vedomosti’s questions were redirected to Transneft, where they did not answer at the time of publication. Vedomosti sent inquiries to the largest oil companies.

On December 5, 2022, EU sanctions against offshore oil supplies from Russia came into force. Hungary and Slovakia, which are heavily dependent on supplies from Russia, have received an indefinite exemption from these sanctions, the Czech Republic until the end of 2023, and Bulgaria until the end of 2024. In the event of problems with the supply of oil through the pipeline, these countries are allowed to accept supplies by sea .

Also, from December 5, the price ceiling for offshore oil supplies from Russia at $60/bbl came into effect. Poland and Germany joined it among the EU member states. The Russian authorities have repeatedly stated that companies from the Russian Federation will not supply oil to countries that join the price ceiling. At the same time, it was not specified whether the ban would affect only sea supplies or pipelines as well.

Stock market expertBCS The world of investment” Yevgeny Mironyuk admits that over time Russia may make exceptions for some countries that have partially or fully joined the oil price ceiling, but this has not yet been announced.

Andrey Maslov, an analyst at FG Finam, explained that Germany and Poland, by submitting applications to Transneft, are trying to hedge against interruptions in supplies from other countries. In his opinion, the refusal of these countries from supplies via Druzhba is “a matter of time”, because the oil market is not so scarce now, and the EU continues negotiations on fuel supplies from other countries.