Germany only wants to import Russian oil until the end of the year. Replacement deliveries are being sought to preserve the Schwedt refinery in Brandenburg. The port in Rostock is now also coming into focus.
For the first time, a tanker has landed sour crude oil from the USA for the East German refinery Schwedt. According to industry insiders, the "Capricorn Sun" unloaded the oil on August 3 in Rostock. The oil is processed in Schwedt and was apparently supplied by Shell, which is the minority owner of the refinery. According to the vesselfinder.com portal, the ship left the Hanseatic city on Friday (5 August). It is currently anchored off the Swedish city of Gothenburg.
According to German government circles, the delivery is part of different types of oil from different regions, with which the refinery has been supplied since around May. This is mainly fed with Russian pipeline oil, as it is majority owned by the state-owned company Rosneft. Shell initially did not comment on this. "Sour" oil has a higher sulfur content than so-called sweet oil and is usually more expensive due to additional processing steps. The sulfur content depends on the origin of the raw material.
As part of the sanctions against Russia, Germany decided to stop importing Russian oil from 2023. The different types of oil are a kind of test run and are intended to show that Schwedt can not only process Russian oil. When Russian oil stops flowing, more than half of Schwedt is to be supplied via Rostock and a pipeline from there. "We want to use this line to transport oil from other countries to Schwedt in the future. There is currently a large tanker with oil from the USA here," said Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig.
Schwesig spoke of up to 75 percent of the oil for Schwedt that could come through the pipeline. In addition, the Polish port of Gdansk plays a role in German considerations, since the rest of the oil could be transported via pipelines from there. Pipeline deliveries from Kazakhstan would also be possible, but they would flow via Russia.
Irrespective of this, the question of ownership at Schwedt must be clarified. As long as the refinery is in the hands of Rosneft, Poland does not want to be involved in supplying Schwedt.
