How the oil industry and Russia trivialize the Druzhba pipeline disaster

[nitpicker]

https://www.dw.com/en/how-the-oil-industry-and-russia-trivialize-the-druzhba-pipeline-disaster/a-49025791

How the oil industry and Russia trivialize the Druzhba pipeline disaster

Date 03.06.2019
Author Andrey Gurkov

Russia is Germany's largest oil supplier. The most important route for transporting Russian oil to Europe's largest economy is the Druzhba ("Friendship&quot pipeline, which was built in the 1960s and transits through several central and eastern European countries, including Belarus and Poland.

For the past six weeks, oil flows through the pipeline have been halted as excessive levels of organic chloride were detected in crude pumped through the pipeline. The reasons for the oil contamination are still not clear. The pipeline is operated by Russia's state-owned company Transneft, which operates 68,000 kilometers (42,253 miles) of trunk pipeline and is controlled by the state.

The crisis is estimated to have cut Russia's oil production to an 11-month low and forced some countries to tap their strategic fuel reserves. It has sent customers scrambling for alternative supplies and led to refinery outages.

The interruption in oil supplies has already led to shortages of heating oil in eastern Germany. The situation could be an existential crisis for some dealers, the oil industry association in the German state of Saxony warned last week. Fuel prices in several eastern German cities have seen a rapid rise over the past couple of weeks.

The Druzhba problem, however, hasn't received much coverage in German national media, despite it affecting a raft of European countries, including Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Belarus and the Ukraine. The German media may have been misled by the official information policy.

For weeks, Russian officials as well as European oil firms were anxious to minimize the fallout from, or even conceal the consequences of what was probably the biggest disaster in the history of the Russian oil industry. For instance, on the homepage of the PCK refinery in Schwedt, Germany — which has been supplied by the Druzhba pipeline since times of the former East Germany — there isn't a mention of the halt to oil deliveries.
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