Belarus limits oil flow to Poland due to pipeline “repairs” amid growing tensions on border

A Belarusian state pipeline company said it has limited the flow of oil to Poland and Germany due to an “unscheduled repair” amid growing tensions on Poland’s border with Belarus, where thousands of migrants are seeking entry into the European Union.

The Soviet-built Druzhba (meaning “Friendship”) Pipeline links Russian oil fields in the Samara region with refineries in Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, and Lithuania. It has a capacity of one million barrels per day.

OAO Gomeltransneft Druzhba, which operates the pipeline, said an unscheduled repair that started on 16 November would limit flow to Poland for three days. The monthly throughput target will not be revised, reported Russian state agency TASS.

“The Polish oil system is fully secured and continuously operating,” said Katarzyna Krasińska, spokeswoman for PERN, the Polish oil pipeline operator, reports Gazeta.pl.

Flows from Belarus to Poland were already limited once for 96 hours in June and renovation works also took place in July, reports Onet.

As tensions on Poland’s border with Belarus escalated last week, President Alexander Lukashenko threatened to cut off gas supplies through the Yamal pipeline to Germany. “We are heating Europe, and they are still threatening to close the border with us. What if we cut off the gas?” he said on Thursday.

The Kremlin, however, has distanced itself from the threats, which it said could harm ties between Minsk and Moscow. The European Commission has responded that gas was an “essential resource” that should not be deployed to geopolitical ends, as Europe tackles soaring energy prices.

Referring to today’s announcement, Anna Dyner, a Belarus analyst at the Polish Institute of Foreign Affairs (PISM), a think tank, said on Twitter that it was “hard to believe the randomness of the failure”.

In response to last week’s threat, today Poland’s gas system operator, Gaz-System, said it was prepared for “any scenario”, reports RMF FM. It said that it has gas stocks to last half a year.

“Firstly, we now have full gas storage facilities, which means we are in a much better position than some countries in Western Europe,” said the state company. “Secondly, we also have an efficiently operating and expanded LNG Terminal in Świnoujście, which allows us to obtain gas supplies from virtually all over the world.”

The company said it could also obtain gas from Germany through the Yamal pipeline, as well as through emergency inter-connectors from Ukraine, the Czech Republic and Germany.

Gaz-System does not operate the Yamal-Europe pipeline. It is currently overseeing the expansion of the Baltic Pipe project to bring gas from Norway to Poland via Denmark by the end of 2022, as Poland seeks to diversify away from Russian supplies.

Poland has accused both Belarus and Russia of orchestrating a humanitarian crisis on its border by attracting tens of thousands of migrants to Minsk and sending them to the border to divide the European Union. Minsk and Moscow have denied waging a “hybrid war”.

Poland’s border guard has recorded more than 33,000 attempts to illegally cross the Polish-Belarusian border, of which 5,500 took place in November.

The government is seeking to introduce new limits on movement in the border zone when the current state of emergency expires at the end of the month.

Main image credit: 2happy/Stockvault (under public domain)

Maria Wilczek

Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.