Crossroads Asia | Economy | Central Asia

Russia to Halt Shipments of Kazakh Oil to Germany on May 1

“There have been no official statements from the Russian side yet, but from unofficial sources, we know it’s true,” Kazakh Energy Minister Yerlan Akkenzhenov said of the impending stoppage.

According to unofficial sources – albeit sources officials appear to believe – Russia plans to stop the transit of oil from Kazakhstan to Germany via the Druzhba pipeline.

Speaking on the sidelines of Astana’s Regional Environmental Summit, Kazakh Energy Minister Yerlan Akkenzhenov said he’d received news of the apparent looming suspension of Kazakh oil shipments from unofficial sources.

“There have been no official statements from the Russian side yet, but from unofficial sources, we know it’s true,” he said. “As of May, we [will] have zero transit through Atyrau-Samara, onward to the Druzhba pipeline and onward to the Schwedt refinery.”

On April 21, Reuters broke the news in a report citing three industry sources who claimed that starting on May 1, Russia would stop Kazakh oil from reaching Germany through the Druzhba pipeline. 

Ironically, the pipeline’s name means “friendship.” It stretches over more than 4,000 kilometers from eastern Russia to Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia, and Germany.

In 2025, Kazakhstan exported 2.146 million metric tons of oil, or around 43,000 barrels per ​day, through the Druzhba pipeline to Germany, a 44 percent increase over 2024. The oil is processed by Germany’s ​PCK refinery in Schwedt, one of the country’s largest and a critical node supplying fuel to the Berlin metropolitan area.

Kazakhstan began supplying the PCK refinery in February 2023 after reaching an agreement with Transneft, Russia’s state-owned oil pipeline company, to use the Druzhba pipeline. Kazakhstan and Germany had settled a deal in December 2022 for Astana to supply Germany with 1.2 million tons in 2023, but Russian allowances were necessary given the basic geography. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the PCK refinery had imported oil from........

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