FILE PHOTO: The logo of French oil and gas company TotalEnergies is pictured at an electric car charging station and petrol station at the financial and business district of La Defense in Courbevoie near Paris, France, June 22, 2021. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes
March 22, 2022
PARIS (Reuters) – French oil major TotalEnergies said on Tuesday it will not renew its Russian gasoil and crude oil supply contracts for its German refinery, adding that it would source crude via Poland and gasoil from Saudi Arabia instead.
The firm, which owns stakes in several Russian projects, has come under criticism after it stopped short of joining rivals Shell <SHEL.L> and BP in planning to divest oil and gas assets in Russia.
TotalEnergies said in a statement that it would not renew crude supply contracts for its 240,000-barrel-per-day Leuna refinery in Germany, which gets fed with Russian oil via the Druzhba pipeline.
Leuna, situated far from Germany’s ports near the city of Leipzig, would be fed with oil via Poland, although it was not clear from TotalEnergies’ statement where that oil would come from.
Having already stopped spot purchases of Russian fuel, TotalEnergies said in its statement that an end to its longer-term contractual supplies from Russia means the last oil products would be imported by the end of this year.
TotalEnergies said that in accordance with the European Union’s decisions to maintain Russian gas supplies at this stage, it would continue to supply Europe with liquefied natural gas from the Yamal plant as long as Europe’s governments consider that Russian gas is necessary.
“Contrary to oil, it is apparent that Europe’s gas logistics capacities make it difficult to refrain from importing Russian gas in the next two to three years without impacting the continent’s energy supply,” it said.
(Reporting by GV De Clercq and Shadia Nasralla; Editing by Jane Merriman, Jan Harvey and Paul Simao)
Source: One America News Network
