Gasoline, Diesel and Co. - CPC Sweden less used than before the Ukraine crisis
One and a half years after turning away from Russian oil, the crucial East German refinery PCK in Brandenburg's Schwedt is significantly less utilized than before. While the plant's utilization rate was 89.8 percent in 2021, it dropped to 76.2 percent in the first half of 2024. In 2023, it was 69 percent, even with a shutdown for maintenance. This information was provided by the German government in response to a query by Left Party MP Christian Görke, which was obtained by the German Press Agency.
The German government had decided, due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, to stop importing Russian oil as of early 2023 - a significant blow to PCK, which had been processing only Russian oil from the Druzhba pipeline for decades. The operators switched to other sources, including crude oil from the ports of Rostock and Danzig, as well as Kazakh oil transported through the Druzhba pipeline to Schwedt.
According to the German government, the amount of Kazakh oil processed at PCK has increased: while 720,000 tons were processed in 2023, 615,000 tons were processed in the first half of 2024, as stated in the response from the Federal Ministry of Economics. Görke emphasized that the prospect of processing 1.2 million tons of Kazakh crude oil this year underscores the importance of this supply source. The Left Party politician called for the import to be secured through a swift contract with Kazakhstan.
The ministry only provided the numbers for utilization and oil quantities after an official request from the MP - initially, it had referred to these as business secrets. In early July, the PCK management publicly stated that they had reached an 80 percent utilization rate again. However, this referred only to individual months, while the new figure covers the entire first half of 2024.
Despite the shift to alternative oil sources, the utilization rate of the PCK refinery in Schwedt has consistently decreased, with a 76.2% utilization rate in the first half of 2024. The German government's response also revealed an increase in the processing of Kazakh oil at PCK, with 615,000 tons processed in the first half of 2024, up from 720,000 tons processed entirely in 2023.
