Reversing of oil pipelines

By Andrej Nosko

“Slovaks want to import oil from Czech Republic” reads the headline of a news feature, run on April 15, 2008 by a Czech daily E15. This story has been copied by all major Czech and Slovak news hubs. Even if one subtracts the bombasticism and ‘exclusivity’ common to the lay journalists, this news is surprising and makes one wonder about three things: authenticity of the news on ongoing negotiations, relation of this news to the wider context, and timing of this message.

Authenticity of news
It is difficult to question the authenticity of the information, whether any negotiations are ongoing between Czech and Slovak administrations, since usually these kinds of negotiations are kept confidential. Tomáš Bartovský, the spokesperson of Czech ministry of Industry and Commerce was quoted by E15 as affirming the ongoing negotiations. The direct quote refers to the situation that “would concern solving of potential supply outages,” no further context of this comment is provided. The daily further quotes director of Czech oil pipeline operator MERO ČR a.s . Jaroslav Pantůček, as saying that reversing of pipeline would cost couple of tens of millions CZK (10M CZK approx. 400k EUR), and that Slovaks would have to finance this operation. The daily further notes, unavailability of any further information on negotiations between Slovaks and German operator of TAL pipeline which feeds in the IKL from the Mediterranean port of Trieste, and which would be a necessary condition for the Slovak-Czech deal to have any substance.

Relation to the wider context
The context and timing of this message is rather bizarre. First of all, the idea of reversing Druzhba to supply Slovakia through TAL-IKL is not novel. When the IKL has been conceived in what was back then called Czechoslovakia, it was a preferred project over an idea of connecting refinery in Slovak capital of Bratislava (Litvinov 5.4 MT/yr, Kralupy 3.3 MT/yr.) to the AWPpipeline (annual capacity of 10 MT/yr) leading to the refinery close to Austrian Capital in Schwechat. (capacity of 9.6 MT/yr) which is also supplied by TAL, but unlike the branch leading to the refinery in Ingolstadt, the capacity of AWP is projected only for the needs of Austrian refinery, and thus rather limited for transporting additional supplies. It was preferred, because connector to Ingolstadt would provide for the possibility of supplying also Slovak part of the federation. Nonetheless, this possibility has to be seen in the wider context. The supplying of Slovakia through TAL-IKL would mean prolonging the transit from the oil exporting country, than loading of oil to a oil tanker, offloading the tanker in Italy, shipping it through Italy, Austria, Germany and Czech Republic further to Slovakia. When one puts this barrel of oil into such a globetrotter context, other reversing plans come to the picture as well.
The most interesting is the possibility for Ukraine to reverse its pipeline between Odessa and Brody to supply its western neighbors with oil from the modern port of Odessa should the exports of Russian oil through Druzhba cease.

Furthermore, the context of the reversing of pipelines has the other side or rather, other direction, as well. Czechs are discussing reversing of IKL to export Russian oil since the early times of IKL has been put into operation, and its capacity has been rather underutilized. This would nonetheless entail changing the technology of the Kralupy refinery, since it is currently unable to process high-sulphuric sorts of pipeline-Urals oil from Russia.
Additional option, envisaged by Transpetrol (owned by Jukos Finance) and OMV already in 2003 is the possibility of building the connector to Schwechat, this option is still on the table.

Timing of the message.
Another question that one can be wondering about, is why has this information been released now? Is it just a coincidence, or is it a part of some information game? Just few days before this message was released, Russian PM visited Slovakia, and a major Slovak daily Sme juxtaposed coverage of his visit in Slovak and Russian media. On the first sight it is quite clear, that Mr. Fico (Slovak PM) met a different Russian PM and Mr. Zubkov has apparently met a different Slovak PM than Mr. Fico, since these two people referred about their meeting in such a different ways. Nonetheless, this question should be dealt with in a different post.

by Andrej Nosko