Druzhba pipeline restarts Russian oil flows to Europe, unblocking EU loan for Kyiv
By Krisztina Than and Julia Payne
BUDAPEST/BRUSSELS, April 22 (Reuters) – Russian oil flowed through the Ukrainian section of the Druzhba pipeline on Wednesday after a months-long standstill, officials said, allowing Hungary to lift its veto on a 90 billion euro ($105.79 billion) EU loan that Ukraine urgently needs.
The Druzhba pipeline has become one of Europe’s most politically charged pieces of infrastructure since a Russian drone attack damaged the pipeline in western Ukraine, halting Russian oil shipments to Hungary and Slovakia.
Hungarian oil group MOL said on Wednesday that Ukraine had informed it that deliveries of Russian crude oil via pipeline had resumed.
“MOL expects the first shipment of crude oil following the restart of the Ukrainian section of the pipeline system to arrive in Hungary and Slovakia no later than tomorrow,” MOL said in a statement. he said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news outlet Izvestia that technical details of oil supplies through the Druzhba pipeline were discussed at the institutional level.
“MOL is also interested in this issue. Contacts are maintained through institutional channels. I do not know the details, because there should have been a request for pumping. … This is rather an institutional issue,” Peskov said.
EU LOAN APPROVAL SHORTLY AFTER PUMPING CONTINUES
An industry source said pumping started at 09.35 GMT and asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
Shortly afterwards, EU ambassadors gathered in Brussels and approved the loan. The European Union’s 27 member states are expected to officially sign the agreement on Thursday afternoon.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the EU’s decision was “the right signal under the current conditions.” Writing on
The EU agreed in principle last year to the loan to maintain Ukraine’s liquidity until 2026 and 2027, but Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and the Slovak government blocked the loan, accusing Ukraine of delaying the repair of the pipeline, which Kiev denied.
Both Hungary and Slovakia are heavily dependent on Russian oil, and Orban has consistently backed Russia.
CHANGE OF PRIME MINISTER IN HUNGARY
Ukraine’s chances of getting a loan had already increased after Orban lost parliamentary elections in Hungary on April 12. The leader of the winning party, Peter Magyar, said he would no longer block EU funds to Ukraine, even though he is not expected to come to power until next month.
The capacity of Druzhba, which means friendship in Russian, is 1.2 to 1.4 million barrels of oil per day, with the possibility of this figure rising up to 2 million barrels per day. But flows have fallen to a fraction of that as a result of Western sanctions as well as repeated disruptions due to drone strikes.
Separately, Germany confirmed that Kazakhstani crude will not reach its PCK Schwedt refinery, one of the country’s largest, from May after industry sources said on Tuesday that Russia was ready to halt Kazakhstan oil exports via the Druzhba pipeline.
($1 = 0.8511 euro)
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Anna Pruchnicka, Krisztina Than, Jan Lopatka, Julia Payne, Bart Meijer, Lili Bayer; Writing by Jan Strupczewski and Ingrid Melander; Editing by Tomasz Janowski, Barbara Lewis, Kirsten Donovan, Will Dunham and Ron Popeski)
