WARSAW (Reuters) – Polish operator PERN said on Wednesday that the leak detected on a section of the Druzhba pipeline, which transports oil from Russia to Europe, was most likely caused by an accident.
The discovery of the leak on the main oil route to Germany, which operator PERN said it detected on Tuesday evening, comes as Europe faces a severe energy crisis following the invasion of Ukraine by Moscow.
Germany’s oil supply is secure and refineries in Schwedt and Leuna are still receiving oil through the pipeline, a spokesman for Germany’s economy ministry said.
“Here we can talk about accidental damage,” Mateusz Berger, Poland’s top energy infrastructure official, told Reuters when asked about the possibility of sabotage.
“We live in turbulent times, different connotations are possible, but at this point we have no reason to believe that,” he added.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, however, said in the evening, at the microphone of public radio PR3, that it was still too early to say whether it was an accident or sabotage.
“There are many signs pointing in the direction of the Kremlin, but we want to be very responsible and only then confirm our assumptions,” he added.
SUPPLY TO GERMANY HAS REDUCED
Europe has been on high alert for the security of its energy infrastructure since the discovery last month of major leaks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines that link Russia to Europe under the Baltic Sea.
Mateusz Berger said the leak was located 70 km west of Plock in central Poland, where the country’s largest refinery, owned by PKN Orlen, is located.
According to PERN, the supply from Germany continues but has been reduced. A drop in pressure has been detected, Joerg Steinbach, the economy minister of the state of Brandenburg, told the DPA news agency.
The total capacity of the western section of the pipeline that carries oil from central Poland to Germany is 27 million tonnes of crude oil per year.
The second line of the pipeline, as well as other elements of PERN’s infrastructure, are operating normally, the operator said.
The Druzhba pipeline, whose name means “friendship” in Russian, is one of the largest in the world. It supplies Russian oil to much of central Europe, including Germany, Poland, Belarus, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Austria.
Polish company PKN Orlen said oil supplies to its Plock refinery had not been interrupted, and a spokesman for Czech pipeline operator MERO said it saw no change in flows to the Czech Republic.
Germany’s Schwedt refinery, which supplies 90% of Berlin’s fuel, is particularly dependent on Druzhba. She was not immediately available for comment.
(Reporting Alan Charlish, Marek Strzelecki and Pawel Florkiewicz; French version Federica Mileo, editing by Kate Entringer and Jean-Stéphane Brosse)