PCK Schwedt refinery receives oil from South America via the port of Gdansk

The shipment via the port of Gdansk is compensation for missing oil from Kazakhstan because Russia had stopped transit through the Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline in May, Unimot explained. The company is thus responding to a supply gap caused by the Russian transit halt.

Unimot: Polish infrastructure secures supply

Unimot Vice President Robert Brzozowski emphasized the importance of Polish infrastructure for the security of supply of both countries. "Die polnische See- und Transportinfrastruktur diene in diesem Fall der Versorgungssicherheit beider Länder," Brzozowski was quoted as saying in the statement. The port of Gdansk and the PERN pipeline are thus becoming an alternative route to Schwedt that operates independently of Russian territory.

The cargo helps ensure that the refinery can keep its facilities running stably at 80 percent of capacity, it was said. The PCK refinery had increasingly relied on alternative procurement routes in recent months after the Kazakh deliveries originally flowing through the Druzhba pipeline failed to arrive.

The PCK refinery not only supplies the greater Berlin area with oil products, but according to its own figures also exports two million tons of fuel annually from Brandenburg to western Poland. The facility is thus a hub in fuel exchange between Germany and Poland, directly linking supply in the Brandenburg region and in western Poland.

Supply for Berlin and western Poland

PERN had previously announced that it could transport up to two million tons of oil annually to Schwedt via its pipeline. With the now-confirmed South American shipment, this capacity is being used concretely for the first time for a single consignment that compensates for the loss from Kazakhstan. The long-term utilization of the route is likely to depend on whether further tankers are booked via Gdansk.

In the background is the halt of Russian transit services through the Druzhba pipeline, which has carried oil from Russia and Kazakhstan to Central Europe for decades. Since May, no Kazakh oil has flowed there toward Schwedt. The current solution via Gdansk and PERN bypasses this bottleneck by transporting the crude oil by sea to Poland and forwarding it from there by pipeline.

Politically, the step is another building block in the diversification of crude oil supply in eastern Germany, after direct deliveries via the Druzhba pipeline were interrupted. Brzozowski pointed out that Polish infrastructure "in diesem Fall" serves the security of supply of both countries – a formulation that underscores the close coordination between Warsaw and the operators in Schwedt.

With the announcement of the South American shipment, it becomes clear that the PCK refinery in Schwedt remains operationally capable of acting even when individual supply routes collapse. According to Unimot and Rosneft Deutschland, the tanker is sufficient to stabilize operations at 80 percent of capacity. No further details were given about the origin of the South American crude itself or about future delivery quantities.