Russian deliveries through the southern Druzhba pipeline servicing Hungary, Slovakia and the Czechia have been halted after the Ukrainian oil infrastructure operator UkrTransNafta, an affiliate of Naftogaz, failed to receive payments from transit fees from Russia's state-owned pipeline transport company Transneft. The northern part of the pipeline supplying Germany and Poland remains unaffected.
The Druzhba crude oil pipeline system has a length of 5,500 km including all its branches and a total capacity of 1.2-1.4 mb/d. The network starts in Almetyevsk in Russia, where pipelines carrying crude oil from Siberia, the Urals and the Caspian Sea encounter. The pipeline runs to Mozyr in Belarus, where it is divided into a northern branch, which continues via Belarus and Poland to Germany, and a southern branch, which runs through Ukraine, splitting in Uzhgorod into Druzhba 1 continuing to Slovakia (where it splits again and goes to the Czech Republic in one branch and Hungary in another) and Druzhba 2 continuing to Hungary.
In June 2022, the European Council agreed that the sixth package of sanctions against Russia will cover crude oil, as well as petroleum products, delivered from Russia into European Union (EU) Member States, with a temporary exception for crude oil delivered by pipeline. Two-thirds of the Russian oil imported by the EU are supplied via tanker and one third by the Druzhba pipeline. When Poland and Germany will stop importing oil from Russia by end-2022, the embargo would cover 90% of all oil imports from Russia. About 10% of EU oil imports from Russia, supplying Hungaria, Czechia and Slovakia, where they cannot be easily replaced, will be temporally exempted from the ban.
In 2020, the EU consumed 10.1 mb/d of crude oil, with imports accounting for 92% of the total. In the same year, the EU consumed 8.7 mb/d of petroleum products; imports covered about two-thirds of the EU demand. In 2021, Russia accounted for 26% of the EU crude oil imports and 43% of refined products imports.