Transneft proposes taking control over all oil transfer stations

MOSCOW, Aug 19 (PRIME) -- Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft has suggested taking control over operations at all oil transfer stations in the country to avoid a repetition of oil contamination in the Druzhba export pipeline, Transneft President Nikolai Tokarev told Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Monday.

Oil contaminated with chlorides appeared in the Druzhba pipeline, which carries Russian oil to Europe via Belarus, in April. Poland and Ukraine stopped the intake of oil, which resumed in July. Transneft is to compensate the losses/

“The proposals primarily suggest taking control over oil transfer stations. There are about half a hundred of them today, and they are mainly owned by oil companies or private firms,” Tokarev said.

“Our representatives are also accredited there, but we can’t exert operating control or take operating activities at these stations fully under our regulatory rule. We’ve put forward a proposal of putting them under Transneft’s operating management.

“It doesn’t mean that we need to put them on our books, we need to have operating control over them at least. It would allow us to ensure full-scale control and measures to ensure supplies of normal good-quality oil coming from different sources.”

He said that Transneft currently has no right to obtain control over the stations.

He also suggested that the Federal Agency for Technical Regulation and Metrology and the Federal Service for Environmental, Technological, and Nuclear Oversight develop a unified regulation for certification of laboratories that analyze the quality of oil.

“Today, they are unfortunately a set of different structures. Each of them operates under its own methodology, with its own chemical agents, with its own equipment. Consequently, their results often differ. There is no unified scale that evaluates their work,” he said.

Medvedev said that the government would study the proposals and prepare regulatory decisions as soon as possible. The contamination incident hurt Russia’s reputation, and the country has to avoid such incidents in the future, he said.

Tokarev also said that Transneft is in close contact with all its partners on loss compensation to the clients.

At the same time, the company and its foreign partners have completely implemented a road map for minimization of damage from the contamination. Good-quality oil is being pumped in all directions to Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Ukraine, and Belarus, he added.

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