Status: 01/11/2023 10:20 a.m
In the future, oil for Europe should also come from Kazakhstan: According to the government in Astana, it has permission to use Russian pipelines for deliveries to Germany in the future.
According to Kazakhstan, it is allowed to use the Russian pipeline infrastructure to transport oil to Europe. “We have verbal confirmation,” said Kazakhstan’s Energy Minister Bolat Akchulatov, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.
As early as January, up to 20,000 tons of Kazakh oil could be pumped to Germany. According to Aktschulatow, official approval from Russia is still required to set the exact start date for deliveries.
According to Akchulatov, Kazakhstan can deliver 1.5 million tons of crude oil to Germany in the course of the year. The country could expand its exports to a maximum of 6 to 7 million tons per year.
Important signal for Schwedt
The Kazakh oil is important for the Brandenburg refinery in Schwedt, because it is currently only being used at around 50 percent capacity. In the event of further delivery cuts, the entire operation may have to be stopped, according to company circles.
So far, the refinery has been supplied with oil from Russia via pipelines. But Germany hasn’t imported any Russian oil since the beginning of the year. After the imports of Russian tanker oil, the acceptance of deliveries via the Druzhba pipeline was also stopped on January 1 – as a sanction because of the war against Ukraine.
At the end of December, Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak announced that the Russian leadership was in principle ready to make the pipeline available for the export of Kazakh oil. The northern strand from Druzhba runs through Poland to Germany to the Schwedt refinery.