Slovak refiner says no deal yet on Adria pipeline tests
Slovak oil refiner Slovnaft said on Wednesday it had still not reached an agreement with Croatia over tests to see if the Adria oil pipeline can carry enough supplies for Hungary and Slovakia, although existing shipments had enabled it to boost production.
The pipeline from Croatia is an alternative oil route to Slovakia and Hungary, and its importance has grown with the Druzhba pipeline - which carries Russian crude and runs through Ukraine - out of operation since the end of January.
Supplies through Adria have helped Slovnaft - a unit of Hungarian oil and gas group MOL - to ramp up processing after a drop caused by the Druzhba outage, Slovnaft's Chief Executive Gabriel Szabo told a televised press conference.
He said that tests of the Adria pipeline, including in different weather conditions, were needed to discover whether it had sufficient capacity to serve the two countries.
MOL and Croatian pipeline operator JANAF had previously agreed on the testing to start in March, according to the Hungarian company, but there were still disagreements over details, Szabo said.
SLOVNAFT SAYS REFINERY RUNNING NEAR 100% CAPACITY. Slovnaft had to cut output and borrow from national crude oil reserves after the Druzhba outage, which Ukraine says was caused by a Russian attack on the pipeline in late January.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that Druzhba would be restarted by the end of April.
Slovnaft has since returned the borrowed crude thanks to shipments of seaborne non-Russian oil through the Adria and the 6-metric MMtpy refinery, which exports diesel to neighboring countries, is now running near 100% capacity, Szabo said.
"We are going at 90% if not 100%, but the technological capacity is limited by the fact that we have to process other crudes than Russian," Szabo said, without giving details on exact volumes.
He said supplies to Slovnaft were also enabled by an outage at another MOL refinery in Hungary following a fire, which limited the amounts required through Adria.
Slovnaft has been investing in technological changes to use exclusively non-Russian oil blends from 2027.
The European Union plans to wean itself completely off Russian oil, though Hungary and Slovakia have objected to the plans and the European Commission has delayed submitting a legal proposal on the matter.
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