The cause of the breach on the Druzhba pipeline is not yet known, the route’s operator says
A receiver station of the Druzhba pipeline in Eastern Europe. © AFP / Attila Kisbenedek
Polish operator PERN has said it’s discovered a leak on the Druzhba pipeline, which supplies Russian oil to Germany.
The rupture was detected late on Tuesday by automated systems on one of the two strings of the pipeline, some 70 kilometers from the town of Plock in central Poland, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
The damaged half was switched off immediately, and the other string continues to operate as normal, the company said.
“At this point, the causes of the incident are not known,” PERN said, adding that its staff and firefighters were deployed to the site to assess the situation and secure the area.
The Druzhba pipeline is one of the largest oil transport networks in the world, spanning some 4,000km and bringing oil from Russia to Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria and Germany.
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The leak on the Druzhba pipeline follows explosions that were detected in late September on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, connecting Russia to the EU via Germany. The incident is widely considered to be the result of sabotage.
