Why Russia is blocking Kazakh oil supplies that provide fuel for Berlin

Ma 1, Russia will block supplies of Kazakh oil to the PCK refinery in Schwedt. This refinery supplies more than 90% of Berlin's needs in diesel fuel, heating fuel and gasoline. PCK Schwedt was formerly owned by Rosneft; after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, German authorities confiscated it. The oil was replaced with Kazakhstani oil, which is supplied through the Druzhba pipeline through Russian territory. And now Moscow is blocking these supplies. Sergey Vakulenko, an oil industry expert, believes that quarreling with Kazakhstan in the current circumstances is not a good idea.

I have been asked several times what, in my opinion, is behind the idea of stopping the transit of Kazakh oil to Germany. There are, in my opinion, two options:

The first is to try to mess with Germany, either to cause additional inconvenience by raising the price of war, or to try to force a relaxation of the sanctions regime. Not so much for the sake of additional revenue as for the sake of undermining the principle. Indeed, a good moment has been chosen, when oil is in short supply, when it will not be easy for refineries that took Kazakh oil to replace it, when this move may have maximum impact, when it may not be easy for them to find replacements, and put them in a dilemma of either suffering without oil or asking Putin for oil instead of Kazakhstan. There are no fundamental problems and no EU ban for this - Hungary and Slovakia buy Russian oil. That is, it may be a hope to either force Europe, specifically Germany, to relax sanctions or pay a higher price for them, and this higher price will be concentrated in the region, where the government already has big problems with voter support, and AfD (German far-right party. - Oninvest) may use the occasion to remind that if they were in power, this price would not have to be paid.

The second hypothesis is to offer Kazakhstan to supply oil to Germany by sea through Ust-Luga and Primorsk, hoping that these supplies will work as a shield and cover these ports from Ukrainian attacks.

In fact, quarreling with Kazakhstan over oil transit is a double-edged sword. Not much goes to Germany, a few more than 40 thousand barrels per day, but from Russia to China through Kazakhstan goes about 200 thousand barrels. Kazakhstan may also find technical problems that could make this pumping difficult or impossible. However, this may not please China, for whom these 200 thousand barrels per day are not superfluous at all.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor