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Russia is planning to halt the flow of Kazakh oil to Germany through the Druzhba pipeline, threatening a refinery that supplies almost all of Berlin’s petrol and heating fuel.
The move will hit the PCK refinery, located about 100km north-east of Berlin, which sits on the pipeline and supplies 90 per cent of the petrol, kerosene and heating fuel to the German capital, its airport and surrounding region.
Russia has increasingly sought to weaponise its energy exports to Europe since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
A senior Kazakh government official said that the move to halt the flow of oil from the country next month was primarily aimed at putting pressure on the EU, and specifically on Germany, the largest arms supplier to Kyiv.
“Every month, Moscow sends Kazakhstan a schedule of oil deliveries via Russia. In the schedule for May, Druzhba was not included,” the official said. It was not a severe issue for Kazakhstan because exports through the route were relatively low, he added.
The PCK refinery, whose operations were seized by the German state following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has relied heavily on Kazakh crude since 2022.
Speaking to reporters at a forum in Astana, Kazakhstan’s energy minister, Yerlan Akkenzhenov, said Russia had not included Druzhba volumes in the monthly schedule of supplies sent to Kazakhstan. It had yet to receive a formal warning from the Kremlin, he added.
Akkenzhenov said that the disruption could be due to technical problems following Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure.
Kazakhstan started exporting oil via Druzhba in 2023. According to the official, the initiative was pushed by Moscow, which hoped to maintain influence over the refinery and ensure its operations until Russia eventually gets a chance to reinstate control over it.
“This is a serious, indeed dramatic, situation for the PCK refinery and the energy supply for large parts of Germany.” Christian Görke, an MP from the leftwing Linke party said. “Russian President Putin is exploiting the situation in the Middle East.”
The German economy ministry did not respond to requests for comments and the foreign office declined to comment. A PCK insider confirmed they would not receive supplies from the pipeline.
The decision to stop the supplies was first reported by Reuters.
Moscow halted gas supplies to Europe through the Nord Stream pipeline in 2022 and repeated threats to halt remaining hydrocarbon supplies to Europe.
Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed his government to “explore the feasibility” of halting energy supplies to the European market before the EU “slams the door in our faces”.
The Kremlin did not immediately reply to a request for comment. On Tuesday, spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that he was unaware of the issue.
A legacy of Germany’s strong energy reliance on Russia, the PCK refinery has been a pawn in the war in Ukraine. In 2022, after Europe, the US and other allies imposed a price cap on Russian oil, the German government assumed control of PCK’s operations by placing it under trusteeship.
But it did not seize its shares, which remain 54 per cent owned by Russia’s state-owned oil group Rosneft. The reason for not expropriating Rosneft was that Berlin feared Moscow would retaliate by nationalising German businesses in Russia.
Berlin has since sought alternatives to the Siberian crude that flowed for six decades through Russia’s 4,000km pipeline to the town of Schwedt, where the refinery is located near the Polish border.
The Kazakh oil major is now its main supplier, but the refinery also receives some oil from the German port of Rostock and the Polish port of Gdańsk.
Last year, the plant neared bankruptcy after the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Rosneft and its assets in Europe. Berlin secured a permanent exemption last month.
Transneft, which operates the Russian part of the pipeline, did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Rosneft declined to comment.
PCK is supplied by Druzhba’s northern branch. The southern branch of the pipeline has also been entangled in the geopolitics of the Ukraine war, after Russian oil supplies to Hungary and Slovakia were cut following a Russian drone strike in January. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday that the pipeline had been repaired and it was ready to restart flows.
