PERN restores Druzhba oil pipeline after leak discovered

Reuters reports that PERN halted pumping through a section of the pipeline, which connects Russia to Europe, after detecting a leak in central Poland on Saturday.

The operator said on Sunday there was no indication that a third party had caused the leak, which follows a series of attacks on pipelines carrying Russian oil and gas since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

"PERN's technical services restored full functionality of the damaged pipeline on Monday evening," the operator said in a statement. "Now the company's focus will focus on clearing the area and restoring it to its proper condition."

"The part of the pipeline that was affected by the leak was cut off from the rest, so the scale of the leak is not huge, we're talking about a rectangular area measuring 30 by 210 metres (yards)," Grzegorz Jankowski from the State Fire Services in Wloclawek told private broadcaster TVN24.

The Druzhba oil pipeline is one of the world's largest and can carry 2 million bpd. The total capacity of the western section of both lines that carry oil from central Poland to Germany is 27 million tpy of crude oil.

Flows through the Druzhba pipeline have dropped sharply since Russia's invasion of Ukraine and pipeline infrastructure has been hit several times since in attacks that Moscow has blamed on Ukraine. Ukraine has not acknowledged the attacks.

Read the article online at: https://www.worldpipelines.com/project-news/08082023/pern-restores-druzhba-oil-pipeline-after-leak-discovered/