Ukraine resumes transit of Russian oil to Europe
UkrTransNafta, Ukraine’s oil pipeline operator, announced that the transit of Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline has now resumed after a temporary suspension due to contamination.
“This became possible, in particular, after specialists from the Hungarian company MOL carried out additional analysis on the oil in the pipe, and confirmed their willingness to accept it,” the Ukrainian company said in a press release on Saturday 11 May.
At the end of April, Russia’s oil exports through the Druzhba pipeline were interrupted due contamination. Belarus suspended the export of light oil products (petrol and diesel fuel) to Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states due to a sharp decline in the quality of the Russian oil arriving at the country’s refineries. The poor quality oil caused expensive equipment to malfunction at the Mozyr Oil Refinery.
The Baltic port of Ust-Luga also stopped accepting Russian oil. Buyers rejected batches of Urals oil due to an unacceptably high organic chlorine content.
The Russian oil transit company Transneft investigated the incident and discovered that contamination originated at the Samara – Unecha stretch of the pipeline.