Transneft Able To Deal With Contaminated Oil Issue - Russian Economy Minister

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 25th May, 2019) Russia's Transneft company has enough resources, in general, to tackle the situation with contaminated oil supplied via the Druzhba pipeline, Russian Economic Development Minister Maxim Oreshkin said Friday.�

"First we must determine the amount of damages [caused by the incident], which has not been fully determined because very complicated technical work must be done to prepare this assessment," Oreshkin told reporters.

Oreshkin stressed that Transneft was able to handle consequences of contaminated oil deliveries.

"Transneft is a strong company economically, so it has all the resources, including the resources necessary to deal with problems that have been created," Oreshkin stressed.

The economy minister highlighted that it was too early to talk about revision of Transneft's dividend payments volume, as the scope of problems caused by the situation with contaminated oil had not yet been determined.

In addition, Oreshkin suggested that the incident would affect Russia's monthly macro indicators to some extent, while it was unlikely that there would be significant changes in general.

The problem with the quality of oil coming from Russia to Belarus through Druzhba pipeline of the Russian state-owned Transneft oil transport monopoly arose in April. Poland and Ukraine suspended oil transits from Russia via Belarus after detecting the increased concentration of organic chlorides in crude oil. Four people were detained over the incident following an investigation in Russia.

The transmission system of Belarus forks into two streams � one going to Poland and further to Germany, the other to Ukraine and further to Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Supplies of uncontaminated oil via Druzhba have already been restored in Belarus, Ukraine and Slovakia.�