According to EU proposals under the 11th anti-Russian sanctions package, the supply of Russian oil through the northern section of the Druzhba pipeline to Germany and Poland should be completely stopped.
Bloomberg writes that this step can be considered symbolic, since these two countries have in fact stopped receiving crude oil from Russia. In response to the cap imposed by Western countries on the price of Russian oil, Russia in February 2023 suspended the supply of crude oil to these countries. Several refineries in Germany have had to deal with complicated logistics to access other grades of oil.
When the EU banned most Russian oil imports in June 2022, an exception was made for Germany and Poland regarding the Druzhba pipeline, through which the two countries imported an average of around 480,000 barrels of oil Russian per day in 2022.
Poland particularly pushed for sanctions on the northern route of the Druzhba pipeline, because otherwise it would have been difficult for Warsaw to legally terminate the contracts and honor its promise to stop importing Russian oil. Poland terminated its last contract to supply Russian oil in the spring of 2023.
At the same time, the northern branch of Druzhba continued to receive small volumes of oil from Kazakhstan. The transit of Kazakh oil through the pipeline will continue to be allowed, since in this case it concerns imports from third countries, including in the form of oil transit through Russia. To clarify this point, the EU proposals contain exceptions that allow the provision of services to support the purchase, import or transport of oil produced in Kazakhstan and to maintain the Caspian Consortium (CPC) pipeline.
After the introduction of the 11th sanctions package, exceptions will remain only for Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which receive Russian oil through the southern branch of Druzhba. This branch of the pipeline passes through the territory of Ukraine.
The new EU sanctions package focuses on limiting the circumvention of sanctions. In particular, they want to ban ships that violate sanctions measures from entering EU ports and special measures will be taken against ships that turn off their navigation systems. In addition, the EU will introduce tools to restrict trade in sanctioned technologies entering Russia via third countries.
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