For almost four weeks, the tanker Mendeleev Prospect has been anchored idly off the Polish port of Gdansk unable to discharge a $50 million cargo of crude oil.
The length and scope of the crisis has given it a political dimension. On Thursday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki decided to get personally involved in finding a solution, but said talks were “very difficult, very tough.” “So far the resumption of flows along Druzhba has been progressing very slowly,” Vienna-based consultant JBC Energy GmbH told clients. “Negotiations and payment arrangements here could well take some time, delaying the full resumption of flows.”
The Russian crude can only be blended down over time, a process requiring hundreds of millions of barrels of clean crude The second problem lies with who’s responsible for the crisis — and the cost of clearing it up. The pipelines are run by Transneft, headed by Nikolay Tokarev, a former KGB pal of President Vladimir Putin. Much of the oil is supplied by state oil company Rosneft, run by the Kremlin power-broker Igor Sechin.
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