Germany is hunting for solutions to reroute crude oil supplies to the PCK Schwedt refinery after Russia said it would halt Kazakh oil deliveries through the Druzhba pipeline starting May 1, with roughly 43,000 barrels per day (bpd) now at risk.
Berlin is now in talks with Poland over moving replacement barrels through the port of Gdansk, with potential deliveries flowing onward to Schwedt, the refinery that supplies much of eastern Germany, including Berlin, with fuels. The plant has become a recurring pressure point since Germany moved away from Russian crude, and this latest disruption exposes how little slack remains in the system.
Kazakhstan shipped 2.146 million metric tons to Germany through Druzhba last year, up 44% from 2024, with another 730,000 tons delivered in the first quarter.
Poland says it has the technical capacity to handle additional flows, but port access, shipping schedules, crude availability and refinery configurations all matter, too. Replacing pipeline crude with seaborne barrels is rarely a one-for-one swap.
The episode also revives an old vulnerability in European oil security in that the infrastructure can be diversified on paper and still remain concentrated in practice, with Druzbha still running through Russia.
Alternatives do exist for Schwedt, but they are costlier and more complicated. The refinery has increasingly leaned on crude arriving through Baltic routes and Germany’s Rostock port, but those channels are limited.
There is a bigger signal here for the oil market. What looks like a regional supply disruption adds to a broader premium around logistics security, not just crude supply. In Europe, barrels are one question. Moving them is another.
And that distinction matters increasingly for pricing, refinery margins, and the value of secure non-Russian supply routes.
By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com
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