Germany Increases Oil Imports from Kazakhstan

After the first test delivery last year, Kazakhstan signed an agreement with Germany, under which the former Soviet Central Asian republic will supply German refineries with more than one million tons of crude oil by the end of 2024. Supplies will be provided by the state oil company Kazmunaigas (KMG). Crude oil from the Karachaganak fields will be transported through pipelines owned by Kazakhstan’s Kaztransoil and Russia’s Transneft companies.

So far, Kazakhstan has already exported 500 thousand tons of crude oil to Germany in the first five months of the year, and by the end of the year the supplies should exceed one million tons. According to KMG’s press release, despite the “green” agenda in Western Europe, Kazakhstan’s demand for liquid hydrocarbons is growing. At the end of 2022, Germany entered into an agreement with Kazakhstan to purchase crude oil with transportation through the Russian Druzhba pipeline to supply crude oil to a refinery in the German city of Schwedt. In 2023, Kazakhstan exported 993 thousand tons of oil to Germany, and for 2024 the volume of transit of Kazakh oil to Germany through the Druzhba pipeline, agreed between Astana and Moscow, will amount to 1.2 million tons.

The Druzhba oil pipeline was built by the Soviet Union in 1964 to connect the USSR’s oil facilities with some countries of the socialist camp: Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the former Yugoslavia, and East Germany (GDR), where Schwedt’s refineries are located.