The cause of the breach is not yet known, says the route’s operator
Polish operator PERN has said it has discovered a leak on the Druzhba pipeline, which supplies Russian oil to Germany.
The breach was detected late on Tuesday by automated systems on one of the two strands of the pipeline, about 70 kilometers from the city of Plock in central Poland, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
The damaged half was shut down immediately and the other strand continues to operate as normal, the company said.
“At this time, the causes of the incident are not known,” PERN said, adding that its personnel and firefighters were deployed to the scene to assess the situation and secure the area.
There is no reason to suspect that the leak was the result of sabotage, Mateusz Berger, Poland’s top official in charge of energy infrastructure, told Reuters. “Here we can talk about unintentional harm,” he said.
Transneft, the Russian operator of the Druzhba pipeline, has confirmed that PERN reported the leak.
The Druzhba pipeline is one of the largest oil transportation networks in the world, spanning approximately 4,000 km and carrying oil from Russia to Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria and Germany.
The Druzhba pipeline leak follows explosions discovered at the end of September on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, which connect Russia to the EU via Germany. The incident is widely believed to be the result of sabotage.
(RT.com)
Source: sn.dk