BUDAPEST (Reuters) -Shipment of crude oil via the Druzhba pipeline resumed on Tuesday afternoon after a suspension following a Ukrainian drone attack on a metering station, said Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto.
Ukraine said on Tuesday it had struck an oil refinery near Moscow and a facility in Russia’s Oryol region that is part of the Druzhba pipeline system exporting oil to Europe. Szijjarto earlier said that crude shipments had to be suspended because of the attack.
“The Russian system operator has repaired the damage caused by the Ukrainian drone attack, allowing oil shipments to Hungary to resume via the Druzhba pipeline,” Shijjarto said.
Slovak pipeline operator Transpetrol said the supply of oil to Slovakia via Druzhba had been halted on Tuesday and that oil flows were expected to resume in the evening.
The southern strand of the Druzhba pipeline, which transports oil from Russia to Europe, forks in Ukraine near the Slovak border, with one line supplying Slovakia and Czech Republic while the other reaches Hungary.
Russia’s Transneft, which operates Druzhba in Russia, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Explosions were … recorded in the area of the Steel Horse linear production dispatch station (Oryol region, Russia), which manages technological processes for the Druzhba oil pipeline,” Kyiv’s General Staff said in a statement.
Hungary imports most of its crude oil via the Druzhba pipeline, which transports Russian crude through Belarus and Ukraine to Hungary and also Slovakia.
Supplies via Druzhba to Czech refineries have been halted since last week. Czech refiner Unipetrol, owned by Poland’s Orlen, said late on Monday that it has started drawing oil from state reserves to continue production at its refineries.
(Reporting by Krisztina Than and Anita Komuves in Budapest, Marek Strzelecki in Warsaw, Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv and Vera Dvorakova in GdanskEditing by Louise Heavens, Susan Fenton and David Goodman)
