Oil flows from Russia to Slovakia via the Druzhba pipeline resumed early on Thursday, Slovakia’s Economy Ministry said, as supply via the infrastructure crossing Ukraine was restored after a nearly three-month halt.
Oil supply is currently flowing as per the agreed daily timetable and technical pumping parameters, Slovakia said.
Slovakia and Hungary are the last remaining EU member states receiving crude oil supply via the Druzhba pipeline.
However, flows were halted at the end of January after the Druzhba oil pipeline was damaged in what Ukraine said was a Russian drone attack.
Hungary and Slovakia, which have kept close ties with Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, have accused Ukraine of delaying the repair works and threatened to reduce power supplies to Ukraine.
Ukraine will complete in the spring repairs on the damaged pipeline Druzhba, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said early this month.
“We will complete the repairs because that is the agreement. I told them we would finish this spring,” Zelenskyy said earlier in April in remarks to reporters carried by Reuters.
“A lot has already been done there… Of course, destroyed storage tanks cannot be repaired quickly,” the Ukrainian president added.
Repairs have been apparently completed as oil started flowing via the pipeline to both Slovakia and Hungary.
The resumption of flows to Hungary led to the end of the deadlock, in which Hungary’s now outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orban vetoed a previously agreed EU loan of $105 billion (90 billion euros) to Ukraine.
Orban had conditioned his lifting of the veto on the resumption of the oil flows via the Druzhba pipeline.
Shortly after Ukraine said that flows to Hungary and Slovakia had resumed, the EU ambassadors meeting in Brussels gave preliminary approval to the loan to Ukraine, and adopted the 20th package of sanctions against Russia.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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