Kazakhstan plans to ship first consignment of oil to Germany today - Energy Minister

ALMATY. Feb 22 (Interfax) - Kazakhstan plans to ship the first consignment of oil to Germany today, Energy Minister Bolat Akchulakov said.

"I think that they will be ready today, and that the oil should be shipped today," Akchulakov told reporters on Tuesday.

KazTransOil national company earlier told Interfax that it planned to pump 20,000 tonnes of Kazakh oil via the Druzhba pipeline to Germany in February.

The company said that it was "technically possible" to transport 300,000 tonnes of Kazakh oil to Germany in February 2023, but "the actual volumes of oil shipments depend on freight shippers' bids."

As Europe planned to reduce its dependence on Russian oil, European players turned to Kazakhstan for oil supplies. Russia granted Kazakhstan permission to pump oil through the Druzhba pipeline to Germany. KazTransOil has planned to supply 300,000 tonnes of Kazakh oil to Germany in Q1 2023. Akchulakov earlier said that Kazakhstan would export 1.5 million tonnes of oil to Germany in 2023, and that it could boost exports to 7 million tonnes going forward.

KazMunayGas CEO Magzum Mirzagaliyev said that Kazakh oil would be supplied to the refinery in the city of Schwedt that had been owned by Rosneft. However, in September 2022, Germany's Federal Network Agency took control of the refinery. Rosneft Deutschland, a subsidiary of Rosneft, holds around a 12% stake in German refining capacity, and it is one of the largest fuel market players in the country. The capacity of the Schwedt refinery is 11.6 million tonnes of oil products per year. Starting from the design stage, the plant has historically been linked with the Druzhba oil pipeline and Russian oil fields.