Amid a ban by EU countries on the vast majority of imports of Russian oil over Moscow’s ongoing unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Kazakhstan plans to launch next month a pilot project that would transport oil to Germany via Russia’s major Druzhba pipeline.
Starting in Russia, this pipeline is one of the largest channels for transporting Russian oil to the EU with one branch going to Belarus, Poland, Germany, Latvia, and Lithuania.
The pilot project, according to Kazakhstan’s QazMunaiGaz (KMG) energy giant, had been agreed upon with German officials and aims to test the potential transporting of Kazakh oil to a refinery in Germany’s northeastern city of Schwedt, which is scheduled to start in January 2023.
With an annual capacity of more than 10 million tons of crude oil, the refinery in Schwedt provides fuel to Berlin and most of Eastern Germany.
The export volume of KMG’s oil – which is delivered to a single system trader, KMG Trading- first meets the needs of the QazMunaiGaz’s oil refineries in Romania while the quantities that remain are later sold under long-term contracts.
KMG’s head Magzum Myrzagaliyev confirmed the pilot project that the company’s management has agreed upon on Tuesday during an online meeting with Michael Kellner, the parliamentary state secretary of the German Ministry of Economy and Climate Protection as well as an in-person meeting in Astana with Bundestag deputy Christian Gerke from the German parliamentary group of the left-wing party.
The German side has reportedly expressed interest in regular transportation of raw materials through this oil pipeline, something that is possible, but it is necessary to solve the contractual and technical issues, as the head of KMG noted.
