PRAGUE – The Czech Republic has become fully independent of Russian oil supplies for the first time in its history, government officials said on Thursday, following the completion of capacity upgrades on the TAL pipeline coming from the west.
The first increased supplies along the pipeline have reached the central oil depot in the Czech Republic, Prime Minister Petr Fiala told a news conference broadcast on Czech TV on Thursday.
The Czech government has sought to end partial dependence on the Druzhba pipeline that has been delivering supplies from Russia for nearly 60 years.
At the end of last year Czech pipeline operator MERO completed an upgrade along the Transalpine (TAL) pipeline, which carries oil from tankers in the Italian port of Trieste to Germany, where it feeds into the Ingolstadt–Kralupy–Litvinov (IKL) pipeline to the Czech Republic.
The TAL upgrade has lifted the capacity available to the Czech Republic to 8 million tonnes per year, enough to meet the country’s annual needs.
Czech refiner Orlen Unipetrol had been sourcing around half of its crude needs from Russia and the other half through TAL.
It has been tapping oil from state reserves to keep up production after the halt in supplies through Druzhba since March, but is preparing to switch to full supplies through TAL following the capacity increase. REUTERS
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