A leak has been discovered in Poland on the Druzhba oil pipeline, through which oil flows from Russia to Europe. The cause is still unknown, said the Polish pipeline operator Pern on Wednesday. According to the Federal Ministry of Economics, the security of supply in Germany is guaranteed despite the damage. The Schwedt refineries in Brandenburg and Leuna in Saxony-Anhalt continued to receive crude oil via the line, a spokeswoman for the ministry said.
The PCK refinery in Schwedt, Brandenburg, announced that less oil was arriving there. “Currently, the crude oil delivery is taking place with reduced capacity,” it said. However, the company does not currently see any risk to the region’s supply of fuel and heating oil. According to the Polish operator Pern, the damage was reported late Tuesday evening on one of the two strands of the western section of the line around 70 kilometers from the central Polish city of Plock. This is the main line through which the crude oil flows to Germany. You keep in touch with the German partners, the delivery to the neighboring country ran “within the scope of the technical possibilities,” it said.
The Federal Ministry of Economics is monitoring the situation and is in close contact with all affected bodies, said the spokeswoman in Berlin. “Both at PCK Schwedt and at the Leuna refinery, the company’s own oil stocks have been deliberately increased in the past few weeks as a precaution.” Schwedt and Leuna would also get oil from the ports of Rostock and Danzig. Because of the oil embargo against Russia that will take effect on January 1, Schwedt needs alternative sources of oil anyway. The federal government also placed the majority owners – two German subsidiaries of the Russian state-owned company Rosneft – under state control in September.
The spokesman for Rosneft Germany, Burkhard Woelki, said that since it is still unclear how serious the leak is and how long a repair will take, the extent of the consequences for the refinery in Schwedt cannot yet be assessed. “We are in the process of taking precautions to ensure the supply.” The refinery supplies large parts of north-east Germany with fuel.
At the end of September, explosions tore several holes in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea. After the detonations, large amounts of gas escaped continuously for days from several leaks in the two pipelines. The leaks were in international waters in the Exclusive Economic Zones of Denmark and Sweden. The suspicion of sabotage is in the room, the federal prosecutor is investigating.
According to the Polish environmental authority, the leak that has now been discovered in the Druzhba pipeline is between the towns of Boniewo and Chodecz. Representatives of the environmental authority examined the damage, and a public prosecutor was also present. The operator’s statement said: “The pumps were switched off immediately. The other line of the oil pipeline is still in operation”. This also applies to the rest of the network. The operator’s emergency services and the fire brigade were dispatched to the site of the leak.
A chemical and environmental clean-up team is on site, a fire department spokesman told the public broadcaster TVP. The action could probably last several hours. One concentrates on pumping a petroleum-based substance from a depression in a corn field. So far, 400 cubic meters of oil have been pumped out, the pipeline has stopped and the pressure is falling. Firefighters are still trying to pinpoint the exact location of the damage.
“The cause of the leak in the Druzhba pipeline is currently under investigation. So far there is no evidence of the cause of the failure. All hypotheses are possible,” spokesman for the coordinator of intelligence services Stanislaw Zaryn wrote on Twitter. The Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline is one of the largest in the world, delivering Russian oil to several countries in Central Europe. Their pipes run partly above and partly below ground.
