Kazakh crude supplies to Germany still suspended after pipeline outage

Kazakh crude flows to Germany remain suspended as the outage on the Druzhba pipeline system looks set to impact its northern branch for a full week, according to officials.

A spokesperson for Poland's state pipeline operator PERN told S&P Global Commodity Insights Dec. 23 that oil supplies through the northern branch of the Druzhba system, which connects Russia to Germany via Belarus and Poland, had still not restarted.

Both the northern and southern branches of the vast pipeline system were taken offline Dec. 19 after what reports initially attributed to a "technical incident" at a pumping station, though flows to the south appeared to have resumed by Dec. 22.

According to the PERN spokesperson, crude oil deliveries to Poland's Adamowo Zastawa border pumping station, sitting on the border with Belarus, have been delayed from Dec. 20 to at least Dec. 26. Crude oil pumping should be restored "by the end of the year" he said, without citing reasons for the delay.

While Poland formally halted its Russian crude imports in 2022 in response to the Russia-Ukraine war, the country still uses the pipeline system to transship crude branded as Kazakhstan Export Blend Crude Oil, or KEBCO, to Germany's Schwedt refinery, which continues to rely on the medium sour grade for around 20% of its feedstock.

A representative for Germany's Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) told Commodity Insights Dec. 24 that the outage had resulted from "a technical problem with pumps in Belarus", but said that supplies should be quickly restored.

"Security of supply is guaranteed as sufficient stocks are available," said the BMWK spokesperson, noting reports of ample crude availability from officials at the Schwedt refinery.

Kazakh pipeline operator KazTransOil confirmed that supply disruptions should not last into the new year, with a spokesperson saying that Kazakh deliveries to Germany via the Russian pipeline system should still take place in December as planned.

Southern flows restored

Flows to the more widely-used southern branch of the Druzhba network appear to have resumed in full, meanwhile, with refiners experiencing minimal disruption owing to the outage.

On Dec. 22, Hungary's foreign minister Peter Szijjarto said that the country was receiving crude again via the pipeline system, while refiner MOL previously said that it was able to continue running its Slovakian and Hungarian refineries at full capacity despite the outage.

Regional refiner Orlen said Dec. 24 that its Czech refinery, Litvinov, was also operating as usual. "Orlen receives crude oil supplies to the Czech Republic without disruptions," a spokesperson said.

The Czech special envoy for energy security, Vaclav Bartuska, previously blamed a two-day interruption in Druzhba crude supply on the Russian government, calling it a "message" after an unexplained outage Dec. 4 forced Orlen to seek emergency crude reserves from the state.

As one of the few countries still processing Russian oil, the Czech government has planned to end its Russian crude processing by June 2025, after the completion of its TAL pipeline expansion intended to boost import capacity via Italy and Germany.