The Czech Republic received alternative oil — contaminated from Azerbaijan

The Czech company became the third European company to report receiving chloride-contaminated oil from Azerbaijan. The presence of organic matter was detected even before entering the refinery.

"In recent days, contaminated crude oil from Azerbaijan has entered the Czech Republic via the TAL pipeline. It has a higher content of organic chlorides than is permissible," the Czech News Agency reports with reference to the operator of the Mero oil pipelines, Orlen Unipetrol and the State Material Reserves Department (ASMR).

"In cooperation with Mero, we will store contaminated crude oil with a volume of almost 60,000 cubic meters at the central oil depot in Nelakhozeves and in storage tanks at the refinery in Kralupy nad Vltava. Subsequently, this oil will be gradually and in a precisely defined proportion mixed with other batches and then safely processed," said Orlen Unipetrol representative Pavel Kaidl.

According to him, an investigation is currently underway into the incident.

"At the moment, two things follow from this. Firstly, it is good that we have already created a certain supply of crude oil to ensure the operation of the refinery in Kralupy-nad-Vltava. Previously, we had only the Russian grade of crude oil suitable for processing at the Litvinovsky Refinery," said Pavel Shvagr, head of the State Material Reserves Department.

After the cessation of Russian oil supplies, the management provided almost a third of the reserves from Russian oil to Orlen Unipetrol, while now the refinery is returning Azeri Light oil, which is usually processed at the refinery in Kralupakh nad Vltava, to reserves, Pavel Shvagr added.

Orlen Unipetrol became the third company to report receiving contaminated oil from Azerbaijan. This was previously announced by the Italian Eni and the Austrian OMV.

Substandard oil was discovered almost two weeks ago. It comes via an oil pipeline from Azerbaijan to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. The operator of the pipeline and the Caspian production project, British BP, confirmed contamination with organic chlorides, which are used to increase oil production, but must be removed before supplying raw materials to oil pipelines.

As EADaily reported, last year from 2.7 million tons were delivered to Russia in the Czech Republic via the Druzhba oil pipeline. In March, deliveries stopped due to difficulties with payment due to sanctions. As a result, alternative supplies of raw materials by TAL began in April, which were planned to be launched only in the middle of the year. After modernization, the capacity of the Transalpine oil pipeline has doubled to 8 million tons.