Russia’s state-owned company Transneft, which operates Russian pipelines, denounced an attack near the border with Ukraine on a supply station on the Druzhba pipeline, which supplies oil to Europe.
“As a result of the impact of the projectile on the territory of the station, there are no injuries and the damage is being repaired by the repair teams. The Druzhba pipeline is operating normally,” Transneft spokesman Igor Demin told the Russian official agency TASS.
The Novozibkovo station, located in the Bryansk region bordering Ukraine, will not start until there is an overload, which happened last year, the source said.
Along the same line, Russian Energy Minister Nikolai Shulguinov assured that the attack had not changed the functioning of the Druzhba, which has two branches, one to the north (Belarus, Poland, Germany, Latvia and Lithuania) and one to the south (Ukraine). , Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Croatia).
Bryansk governor Alexandr Bogomaz on Tuesday night blamed the Ukrainian army for the attack, which left a 20-meter-high crater.
According to the source, two small villages nearby were without electricity for hours.
The attack came just as Kazakhstan announced plans to supply Kazakh oil to Germany from the first half of February.
Kazakhstan’s Energy Minister Bolat Akkulakov told EFE that the first shipment of 20,000 tons will be delivered in the first half of February.
Demin said the Druzhba pipeline was now ready to deliver Kazakh oil “through Russia, Belarus, Poland to Germany through the northern branch of the Druzhba”.
European Union (EU) sanctions include an embargo on Russian oil arriving by sea and exemptions for oil arriving by pipeline in landlocked countries such as Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
It is estimated that Kazakhstan could ship up to 300,000 tons of crude oil through this route in the first quarter of 2023, out of a total of 1.2 million tons per year agreed by Kazakh operator KazTransOil and Transneft.
Source: DN
