Oil transit to Europe unaffected by pipeline repairs in Belarus

Gomel, January 17 – Neftegaz.RU. Ongoing repairs of a section of the Mozyr-Brest 3 oil pipeline will not affect the overall volume of transit of Russian oil to Europe, BelTA learned from Chief Engineer of Gomeltransneft Druzhba Andrei Verigo.

The executive said: “Interests of oil buyers in Poland and Germany will not be affected. Everything has been agreed. Moreover, repairs of a section of the oil pipeline in Mozyr District coincide with similar work in Russia. At present the throughput capacity of the delivery chain from Samara to Poland has been reduced to predetermined figures.”

In his words, the contract with Transneft clearly specifies all aspects of interaction with partners. “We inform partners about the need to perform some work by the 24th day of every month. In December 2019 we told them we'd received a report on diagnostics of the Mozyr-Brest 3 oil pipeline and were analyzing the data and evaluating the risks.

Taking into account this and plans of the partners a schedule was compiled for moving oil bearing in mind needs of oil refineries in the EU and Belarus and Russian oil delivery volumes,” he said. The approach to interaction between partners allows accomplishing two goals simultaneously: ensuring reliable and safe repairs and delivering oil to customers.

On 14 January Gomeltransneft Druzhba started repairing a section of the Mozyr-Brest 3 oil pipeline. The 17th km and the 30th km of the oil pipeline need to be repaired. Plans have been made to replace a total of 40 meters of the pipes. Diagnostics has revealed a considerable amount of similar defects concentrated in one section of the oil pipeline in this area.

Apart from that, the oil pipeline sections are close to populated localities and bodies of water. If left unrepaired, the sections will pose substantial environmental risks in the course of normal operation.

Repair work on one of the sections has halved its throughput capacity for 120 hours. “The section is designed to transport 140,000 tonnes of oil per day. It can transport an average of 4.2 million tonnes of oil to Poland within 30 days. The amount of oil transported does not usually exceed 3 million tonnes.

So technologically speaking, we have some reserves for doing this kind of work,” Andrei Verigo pointed out. The repairs proceed day and night. The work is supposed to be finished on 17 January.