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Orlen SAOrlen energy completes last contract for Russian crude oil supply, terminating cooperation
At the end of June, Poland's largest energy concern Orlen completed its last contract for the supply of crude oil from Russia, which means that the company and the entire region will no longer be bound by any contracts with Russian entities regarding the supply of this raw material, Orlen announced in a press release.
"We have completed the last (...) contract for oil supplies from Russia to the Czech Republic. This means that on July 1, 2025, the Orlen group, and thus the entire region, will be free of Russian oil. We have closed this chapter and are working together to build a secure future for the region," said Orlen's CEO Ireneusz Fafara, quoted in the press release.
"Today, we buy oil from all over the world. In our refineries, we process raw materials from the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, the North Sea, Africa and both Americas. This is what security looks like today, which we promised to Poles and the region," he added.
The contract with Rosneft, which has expired on June 30, 2025, was the last one binding Orlen to Russian oil. Other contracts for supplies from Russia to Poland via the Druzhba pipeline had already been terminated.
The company also decided to stop importing Russian crude oil by sea. As a result, since April 2023, 100 percent of the crude oil processed at Orlen refineries in Poland and Lithuania has come from alternative sources.
The contract was signed twelve years earlier. It provided for oil supplies to the refinery in Litvinov, Czech Republic. However, due to the lack of sufficient pipeline capacity to import oil from alternative sources, Litvinov relied on supplies from the Druzhba pipeline.
Therefore, after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Czech government asked the European Union for an exemption from sanctions and permission to continue importing Russian oil in order to ensure an adequate supply of petroleum products to the Czech market.
As indicated, Orlen prepared the plant in Litvinov, which had been operating on the basis of supplies from Russia since its inception, to process other types of oil.
The company carried out a number of technological modifications and tests of various raw material mixtures. In March 2025, after the launch of the TAL Plus pipeline, Orlen switched completely to alternative raw materials. Currently, Czech refineries are supplied with crude oil from, among others, the North Sea and Mediterranean regions, Saudi Arabia, South and North America, and Africa.
mcb/ ao/