What would be the consequences of an oil embargo against Russia?
Many chemical sites in Brandenburg and Saxony that are still competitive are designed for oil imports from the East.
The EU Commission, but also politicians in the traffic light coalition are pushing ever more energetically for a speedy oil embargo against Russia. Concern that the "lights will go out" is growing, especially at chemical sites in Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt. The refineries in Schwedt and Leuna stand for the all too rare success stories of the “Upswing in the East”. A locational advantage of these chemical sites in the 1990s was the oil and gas pipelines that already existed in the GDR era, through which energy from Siberia flows very cheaply in international comparison.
Germany as a whole currently obtains around a third of its oil from Russia. In 2021 it was almost 28 million tons.
Supply via the "Druschba"
Despite this high proportion, the State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Economics, Michael Kellner (Greens), told the Nordkurier that independence from Russian oil should come before the end of this year. The Greens politician Anton Hofreiter believes that an even faster exit is feasible. "It can be done within a few weeks because there are other suppliers," said the chairman of the Committee on European Union Affairs.
The French mineral oil company Total has already announced that it no longer wants to buy Russian oil for its refinery in Leuna from the end of the year. Total wants to resort to the international oil market instead. According to French plans, the oil is to be brought in via the seaports of Rostock and Danzig. To date, Total in Leuna has been processing around twelve million tons of Russian crude oil into petroleum products such as petrol, diesel, heating oil and aircraft kerosene every year. Leuna thus largely covers the needs of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia. The refinery in Leuna is also Germany's largest producer of methanol, an important raw material for the chemical industry.
Within the industry, the plan to do without Russian oil is viewed with skepticism. In fact, an embargo on Russian supplies not only means that in future the corresponding quantities of oil will have to be bought together from different suppliers on the markets. The purchase price and the quality of the oil also play an important role. For decades, Leuna and Schwedt have been getting oil from Siberia via the "Druschba" oil pipeline. Accordingly, the refinery in Schwedt, Brandenburg, is also precisely tailored to high-sulphur oil of the "Ural" variety.
Gerhard Möllmann, who has a doctorate in process engineering and helped set up the refinery in Schwedt in the 1960s, told the Berliner Zeitung that converting the plant from Ural oil to another type of oil was solvable, but also complicated and time-consuming. The industry expert was even more skeptical about supplying the refinery via the port of Rostock. Although there is one line that is still intact, the diameter of 50 centimeters is so small that the plants in Schwedt are "used to capacity at 40 percent at best".
If Germany's third-largest refinery actually had a supply problem, Berlin, Brandenburg and regions east of the Oder would feel the effects particularly badly. According to the company, nine out of ten cars in Berlin and Brandenburg run on fuel produced at the refinery north of Schwedt. The plant, which is even larger than the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg, also supplies heating oil, kerosene and bitumen.
In Leuna, too, there are doubts as to whether the Russian oil quantities previously delivered via the "Druzhba" pipeline can be completely replaced from other sources. Leuna not only stands for the Total refinery, but for an entire chemical site with many medium-sized companies. Christof Günther, energy policy spokesman for the Northeast Chemical Industry Association, estimates that it will not be possible to completely replace the Russian supply volumes. The Leuna manager also pointed out the danger that competitiveness might be lost due to higher procurement prices. According to Günther, the increased energy and production costs would make it impossible to compete with cheap producers in the long term.
The specialist magazine Agrarheute recently referred to the importance of another chemical location in Saxony-Anhalt. Germany's largest factory for nitrogen fertilizers is located in Piesteritz. As a result of the increased gas prices, the plant has already cut back its fertilizer production. From the point of view of Agrarheute, an end to fertilizer production in Piesteritz would have “similarly dramatic consequences for the fertilizer supply in Germany and of course also for fertilizer prices” like the loss of Russia as the world’s largest exporter of nitrogen fertilizer.
Source: Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung
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