The Romanian Ministry of Energy has declared a crisis-level emergency due to the supply of contaminated Azerbaijani oil, according to the agency’s website. We are talking about the supply of 92,000 tons of Azerbaijani crude oil contaminated with organic chlorides. This was reported to the country’s Ministry of Energy by OMV Petrom.
From July 16 to 18, the company received a ship with Azerbaijani crude oil loaded at the port of Ceyhan (Turkiye). The batch turned out to be contaminated. As a result, Petrom decided to abandon the loading of another batch of 92 thousand tons.
“Thus, 184,000 tons of imported crude oil have become unavailable for supplies to Petrobrazi refineries,” the report says.
For the continuous operation of the refinery, OMV Petrom, which owns the company, requested the unloading of 80 thousand tons of crude oil and 30 thousand tons of diesel fuel from emergency reserves.
Declaring an emergency mode was necessary to tap into fuel reserves. The Ministry of Energy notified the European Commission about the emergency and allowed unloading from emergency reserves, which “ensured the smooth operation of the refinery and avoided serious disruptions in the national fuel market,” the agency said.
Significant volumes of Azerbaijani oil are supplied via the Baku—Tbilisi—Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline. BTC Co., which built the pipeline, is managed by British Petroleum (BP Plc), the largest oil producer in Azerbaijan. At the end of July, BP announced that some of the oil flowing through BTC had been contaminated with fuel containing organic chlorides, which are used to increase production of raw materials. The receipt of some of the contaminated oil was also reported by the Italian Eni SpA.
At the end of last month, the CTK news agency reported that contaminated oil from Azerbaijan entered the Czech Republic via the TAL oil pipeline. The concentration of organic chlorides in it also exceeded the norm. This information was confirmed by Orlen Unipetrol, the operator of the Mero oil pipeline, and the State Administration of Material Reserves (SSHR).
“This oil poses no danger to the tanks and pipelines operated by Mero CR,” said company spokeswoman Barbora Puttsova.
Pavel Kaidl, a representative of Orlen Unipetrol, clarified that we are talking about contaminated oil with a volume of almost 60 thousand cubic meters. According to him, it will be stored at the central oil depot in Nelagozeves and at the refinery in Kralupach nad Vltava.
“This crude oil will subsequently be gradually and in a certain proportion mixed with other supplies to dilute it, and then safely processed,” Kaidl explained.
He stressed that the incident did not affect the operation of oil refineries and oil supplies to the republic. Mero and TAL have launched an investigation.
Currently, oil is supplied to the Czech Republic only through the Italian TAL pipeline and its German branch IKL. Previously, the republic received oil through the Russian Druzhba pipeline, but supplies through it were stopped in March, RBC reminds.
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