(MENAFN) Numerous main refineries in Germany are dealing with difficulties due to the administration’s verdict to entirely halt Russian fuel shipments at the end of December 2022.

The Schwedt refinery, which provides 90 percent of all petroleum outputs consumed in Berlin, will function at 70 percent of its regular volume from January, public broadcaster ZDF mentioned in a report.

The refinery, the fourth-biggest in the country, has been massively reliant on distributions of Russian crude oil through the Druzhba pipeline.

Michael Kellner, state secretary at the Economy Ministry, informed ZDF that Russian oil is going to be substituted with provisions through pipelines from Germany’s Rostock port and neighboring Poland.

As per the government’s scheme, the pipeline from Rostock is going to reach around 55 percent of the Schwedt refinery’s supply requirements.

Berlin is optimistic to get an additional 15 percent from the Gdansk terminal in northern Poland, and is also in discussions for oil shipments from Kazakhstan, as mentioned in the report.

Manuel Frondel, a specialist from the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research, asserted that “It is not clear whether we are ruining Russia, or rather ourselves, by stopping oil imports from these pipelines.”

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