Moscow cuts off oil supplies to Warsaw

Reuters and AFP

La Jornada newspaper
Sunday, February 26, 2023, p. 17

Warsaw. Russia has stopped supplying oil to Poland through the Drogba pipeline, which provides about 10 percent of the country’s needs, the CEO of the Polish refinery PKN Orlen, Daniel Obajtec, said yesterday, adding that the company will resort to alternative sources.

The supply disruption, which was exempt from EU sanctions imposed on Russia in the wake of its all-out invasion of Ukraine, came a day after Poland delivered its first tanks. Fahad to Ukraine. Russia has stopped supplies to Poland, but we already expected it. Only 10 percent of our crude oil comes from Russia and we will replace it with other suppliersObajtek wrote on Twitter.

PKN Orlen said it could supply its refineries entirely by sea and that stopping pipeline supplies would not affect shipments of petrol and diesel to customers.

Poland announced last year that it has radical plan To end all Russian oil imports by the end of 2022. From February, after the expiration of a contract with Russia’s Rosneft, PKN Orlen received oil under an agreement with the Russian oil and natural gas company Tatneft. Warsaw indicated a few days ago that it continued to buy 10 percent of its supplies from Moscow, despite calls for greater sanctions on Russian hydrocarbons. There was no immediate comment from Tatneft and Russian pipeline monopoly Transneft.

The supply disruption came after US President Joe Biden visited Warsaw this week in a show of support for Ukraine a year after the invasion. The day before yesterday, the European Union approved the tenth package of sanctions against Russia.

He said that after the invasion of Ukraine and before the European Union imposed an embargo on Russian naval supplies, PKN Orlen stopped buying Russian fuel by sea and bought from West Africa, the Mediterranean, the Persian Gulf and Mexico. It also has a contract with Saudi Aramco. The sea supply reaches Poland via Naftoport, an oil terminal in Gdansk on the Baltic Sea. It could receive 36 million tons of hydrocarbon annually, which exceeds amounts that Polish refineries can process and is used in part to supply East Germany linked to Druzhba.

Due to the capability of Naftoport and the fact that we also have other ways to import engine inputs, customers will not feel any impact. We have prepared for itMateusz Berger, state minister responsible for strategic energy infrastructure, told Reuters by phone.