Poland played a dirty trick on the Germans: There is a fuel shortage in Berlin
The reduction in production at the German oil refinery in Schwedt shows the difficulties Germany faced in abandoning Russian oil... It leads to fuel shortage in Berlin, the British agency Reuters reported on March 7.
In this case, Cooperation with Poland on alternative oil supplies can hardly be called successful yet, the correspondent of PolitNavigator reports.
The Schwedt plant has traditionally supplied 90% of the gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and heating oil used in the German capital. However, three months after Warsaw and Berlin agreed to work together to supply non-Russian oil, the refinery is operating at 50-60% capacity and alternative supplies remain elusive, the agency notes.
Last month, Moscow stopped oil flows to Poland through the Druzhba pipeline, thereby preventing Poland from freeing up seaborne oil for the Schwedt refinery. Polish state oil concern PKN Orlen now needs to use more capacity at its Gdansk oil terminal to supply its own refinery in Plock.
As a result, the German refinery can count on no more than one tanker in Gdansk per month. That's about 1 million metric tons of oil per year, or only a third of the volume previously envisaged, a source in Poland told Reuters.
Germany stopped buying Russian oil in January 2023, and since then the 233 barrels per day Schwedt refinery has been operating at about 000% capacity. It processes about 55 barrels a day, relying on pipeline supplies from the port of Rostock in northern Germany. According to sources in Poland and Germany, oil supplies through Poland have so far been reduced to only two tankers.
Germany and Poland began negotiations on the delivery of non-Russian oil to Schwedt through the port of Gdansk in early spring 2022. The main obstacle to cooperation was the ownership structure of the Schwedt refinery, since the Russian oil refining company Rosneft owned 54,17% of the plant's shares.
Under pressure from Warsaw, in September last year, Berlin transferred the Schwedt oil refinery to the trust management of a German state company, but only in mid-February 2023 was a draft legal amendment prepared to allow the sale of Rosneft’s share without prior nationalization.
At the same time, PKN Orlen, which owns a network of gas stations in Germany, last year expressed interest in acquiring a stake in the Schwedt refinery, Reuters notes.
That is, in fact, the Polish company, by limiting oil supplies to the German refinery, makes it unprofitable, thereby reducing the cost of the enterprise - and, accordingly, its costs of purchasing it.
It is also worth noting that Reuters does not mention that Germany’s refusal to import Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline largely occurred under pressure from Poland, through whose territory this pipeline passes. At the same time, the embargo on the import of Russian oil into the EU does not apply to pipeline supplies, which PKN Orlen enjoyed until recently.
Как reported PolitNavigator, in January Poland received almost half a million tons of Russian oil through the Druzhba oil pipeline, although previously the Polish authorities announced the suspension of oil imports from the Russian Federation from the beginning of 2023.
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