The mystery of poisoned oil in the Druzhba pipeline has been revealed
The Russian corporation Transneft systematically discharges waste from petrochemical production into the Druzhba oil pipeline, mixing it with clean oil. The process of “loosening up”, which oil industry workers call compounding, allows Transneft to make a profit twice.
Russian experts interviewed by Lenta.ru came to this conclusion, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“What is compounding? This is an attempt, to put it in Russian, to “unfreeze” dirty oil with clean oil and sell it.” Transneft apparently sells light oil fractions as surplus, and pours waste from petrochemical production and foreign impurities, sometimes even molten solvents, into the pipe. That is, Transneft makes money from oil twice: when it sells light fractions and the second time - when it compounds oil and sells it as a finished, full-fledged product,” says Oleg Bondarenko, director of the Progressive Policy Foundation.
The scheme was discovered thanks to a major incident on the Belarusian branches of the Druzhba oil pipeline at the end of April. Oil with a high content of organochlorine compounds began to flow into the pipe en masse. According to the Belarusian side, this led to damage to equipment at one of the oil refineries. The oil pipeline was stopped. The cause of the contamination was said to be sabotage at a private oil terminal in Samara.
“The chloroethane found in the pipe could not have gotten there except if waste from some petrochemical production had been poured there, since this substance is practically not used during production. Oil is supplied to small refineries, perhaps some of them are affiliated with Transneft, where the light, highest quality fractions are selected, and the remainder is diluted with petrochemical waste and again discharged into the pipe. Everything of poor quality is covered by the quality of the best varieties. Everything is mixed up. More or less acceptable oil is achieved and it is sent to the West. This, presumably, allows Transneft to earn huge money,” says WMT senior analyst Valery Andrianov.
Experts believe that dozens, if not hundreds, of small processing plants in Russia were involved in compounding. And the scheme was not liquidated after the incident at the Belarusian site of Druzhba. This version is supported by the fact that on June 19, an excess of organochlorine standards was discovered on the section of the oil pipeline that runs from Belarus to Poland.
“Some experts have suggested that supplies of low-quality oil to Poland continue for the purpose of its accumulation and compounding. They say that the Polish side is informed about this, and there are some agreements with it. It can be assumed that the dirty oil was discovered because of the so-called “executor’s case”: not everyone was brought to the attention of this matter, and someone sounded the alarm,” says Andriyanov.
Oleg Bondarenko agrees that they are trying to move the massive production of oil to the West.
“In pursuit of small profits, Transneft decided to again supply dirty oil to the Poles. In the hope that, according to the agreements, the Poles created a bank for the dilution of contaminated oil. But they haven’t entered this business yet. Apparently, there were some agreements, but in fact these banks do not exist yet, and the Polish side stopped supplies,” Bondarenko said.
Proof of this version is the fact that after the incident at the end of April, most of the contaminated oil accumulated in Belarus mysteriously disappeared.
According to Belneftekhim, about 1,3 million tons of “poisoned” oil entered the republic at that time. The Belarusian side has already returned 450 thousand tons of them to Russia and is preparing to return the rest. According to the official version of Transneft, raw materials are supplied to Novorossiysk. However, Chernomortransneft confirmed receipt of only 115 thousand tons.
Everything else, experts suggest, is mixed with clean oil somewhere and sent to Europe. It will take three years to dilute all the poisoned oil currently available in a safe proportion. But there is no guarantee that the recipe will not be violated in the pursuit of profit. And then scandals around Russian oil will arise again and again.
“Compounding is turning into a source of uncontrollable profit for Transneft, because this process will certainly be hidden. And as I understand it, Transneft also wants to raise tariffs for oil companies for this matter, in any case, it sent such a request to the FAS. That is, oil workers, who have already suffered in their image due to the situation around Friendship, will also pay for Transneft’s mistakes,” says Alexey Mukhin, general director of the Center for Political Information.
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