Germany stops buying Russian oil on January 1, while Poland still remains

Germany and Poland are about to halt purchasing Russian oil by the end of this year. In this way, Germany already plans to replace some amount of oil with supplies from Kazakhstan. Poland, however, is not in a hurry yet to make a final decision, at least for the next couple of months.

These countries receive Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline. The supplies through this pipeline are not covered by the EU embargo, but the two countries have pledged to stop further oil exports from Russia.

Poland seems to extend the trade contract with Russia next year. Igor Demin, a spokesman for the oil pipeline operator, said Transneft's oil shipment plan for January calls for 500,000 tons of Russian oil to be delivered to Poland via Belarus. The country's only oil refinery PKN Orlen said it was fulfilling the contracts for purchases from Russia.

Meanwhile, Germany aims to sign a contract with Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan's oil pipeline operator KazTransOil has requested Transneft for transit capacity to send 1.2 million tons of oil to Germany.