Russia cuts oil deliveries to Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is having to tap state oil reserves and bring in crude oil through the Ingolstadt pipeline after a sharp drop in deliveries from Russia. The country’s main oil refiner Unipetrol said last Friday that Russia had unexpectedly cut deliveries by nearly 50 percent, news that led to speculation that Moscow had made the move in retaliation for the signing of a Czech-US treaty on the positioning of a US missile defense radar on Czech soil. So what impact may the outage have on the Czech economy and will it increase the price of petrol on the Czech market? I called Dana Dvořáková from Unipetrol to find out:

“At this moment our production continues without any changes. The reason is that we are using crude oil from the state material reserves and at the same time we cooperate with MERO, a company managing the international pipeline. We are trying to increase the crude oil volume from Mediterranean Sea, supplied by the Ingolstadt pipeline. We are not completely dependant on Russian Druzhba pipeline, so at this moment, the production goes as usual.”

How long could the Czech Republic theoretically last without supplies from Russia?

“We were told that the decrease of supplies from Russia is caused by technical problems. We still believe that it’s just a short term issue that will be solved within a few days. At this moment, there is still a supply of Russian crude oil. It was reduced roughly by 50 percent. But even if we had no oil from Russia we would still be able to manage for one month with state reserves and in the meantime secure more oil from the Ingolstadt pipeline. So there is no reason to worry that we would stay without crude oil.”

What about prices of petrol?

Photo: CTK

“We stated during the weekend, and the statement has not changed, that prices have not been affected. The volume of gasoline and diesel on the market will be OK; there won’t be any shortages at this moment and we don’t expect any prise hike.”

Did these technical problems have impact on other countries that are supplied by the Druzhba pipeline, such as Poland or Hungary?

“I think this is a question for MERO, the company managing the international pipelines, rather than for Unipetrol, who is the final consumer of the crude oil. But as far as I know, there is no shortage in other countries.”