Poland opens oil reserves after stopping supplies from Russia
The Polish Energy Ministry has decided to use 800,000 tons of oil from its strategic reserves to compensate for the Russian oil that the country has not been receiving, Reuters reports, citing an official spokesperson.
On 25 April, Poland announced that it had stopped accepting Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline. Warsaw informed Gomeltransneft Druzhba, the Belarusian pipeline operator, that the oil refineries in Poland and Germany cannot accept oil with the quality indicators that were recorded at the Adamowo pumping station. Gomeltransneft then informed Russia that oil transit was being suspended.
On 19 April, the Belarusian state oil concern Belneftekhim reported a high organochlorine compound content in the oil coming from Russia. The company warned that such oil could cause problems for refineries.
Igor Demin, spokesperson for the Russian oil transport monopoly Transneft, said that the contaminated oil originated at the private SamaraTransNeft Terminal in the Samara province. The terminal itself said that the contamination took place at the Samara-Unecha node, which was sold to a different company at the end of 2018 and later bought by Nefteperevalka.
The Russian Energy Ministry announced that clean oil should reach Belarusian oil refineries by 2-3 May. Gomeltransneft Druzhba announced that the clean oil would reach Belarus no earlier than 23:00 on 2 May. However, it will only reach the company’s primary station by 4 May at the earliest.