The share of oil imported by the Czech Republic via the Russian Druzhba pipeline has increased this year to 65% of total supplies. As a result, the figure became the highest since at least 2012, Czech News Agency reports, citing Barbora Putcova, press secretary of the state-owned company that operates the republican oil pipelines Mero.
“For all of last year, this figure was 56%, and in previous years it was even lower,” she explained.
As the agency notes, the Czech Republic receives the rest of its oil through the IKL oil pipeline from Germany, which is connected to the TAL pipeline from Italy. Over the entire last year, they supplied 7.4 million tons of oil to Czech refineries, which is approximately 7% more than in 2021.
The Druzhba pipeline was built in the 1960s. for the delivery of oil from the USSR to the socialist countries in Eastern Europe. It starts in the Samara region and pes through Bryansk, and then divides into two branches: northern and southern. Germany and Poland received oil along the northern branch through Belarus, and Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic along the southern branch (going through Ukraine).
As Vedomosti was told by sources familiar with Ministry of Energy statistics, in 2022, 38.4 million tons of oil were pumped through Druzhba. Germany and Poland have repeatedly stated their desire to refuse Russian oil supplies, and Warsaw has called for sanctions against Druzhba. Despite this, the EU embargo that came into force on December 5, 2022 did not include restrictions against the pipeline.
As Vedomosti previously wrote, the share of Russian oil and petroleum products in the total volume of imports into the European Union countries in the second quarter of 2023 decreased to 2.3%. According to UN Comtrade, the volume of supplies of oil and petroleum products from Russia to the EU amounted to 4.9 million tons, or $2.1 billion in monetary terms, in the second quarter of this year. As IIRT FEC expert Kirill Rodionov calculated, in the first six months, oil supplies from Russia to the EU fell by 81% to 11 million tons, and the Russian share in the import structure decreased from 25 to 5%. At the same time, revenue from Russian oil exports to Europe in January–June 2023 fell almost 10 times by the first half of 2022 to 3.9 billion euros.