Samaratransneft-terminal denies involvement in oil contamination

MOSCOW, Apr 29 (PRIME) -- Samaratransneft-terminal (STNT) does not have and cannot have any relation to the injection point of “dirty” oil to the Druzhba pipeline, the company said on Monday citing CEO Anton Tomilov.

“Samaratransneft-terminal reports that it has not and cannot have any relation to the point of injection of “dirty” oil into the Druzhba pipeline. The terminal mentioned in the Transneft statement was sold by the company in 2017 to Nefteperevalka. The mentioned terminal is located outside the plant. There are no commercial relations between Nefteperevalka and STNT at the moment,” the statement said.

“STNT is an oil refinery. In other words, it is a consumer of oil and cannot have relation to the delivery of oil to the pipeline.”

Igor Dyomin, advisor to oil pipeline monopoly Transneft’s president, said on April 26 that Russian law enforcement agencies had opened a criminal case on the fact of oil contamination in the Druzhba pipeline, the first results show that this pollution was a deliberate act. According to him, “injecting organochlorine compounds was carried out through a metering station belonging to a private structure of Samaratransneft-terminal, which receives oil and analyzes its quality from several small producers.”

The problem with the quality of oil coming from Russia to Belarus via the Druzhba pipeline appeared last week. As oil contaminated with chlorides moved through the pipes, Poland stopped receiving oil from Druzhba late on April 24, and Ukraine did so late on April 25. The operators of the Russian, Belarusian, Polish and Ukrainian sections of Druzhba met in the Belarusian capital of Minsk on April 26 to discuss the mechanism to clean the pipeline system from contaminated oil.

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