Germany’s Schwedt Residents Fear Fuel Crisis Over Pipeline Shutdown

(MENAFN) Residents of the eastern German city of Schwedt are sounding the alarm over a potential fuel crisis, warning of devastating consequences if oil supplies to their local refinery are cut off — fears that have deepened after Russia declared it can no longer route Kazakh oil directly to Germany through the Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline.

The anxieties were voiced to the Ruptly video agency, as the city braces for a potential disruption to the PCK refinery — the industrial lifeline that supplies roughly 90% of fuel to both Berlin and the surrounding state of Brandenburg. The plant had already pivoted away from Russian crude to Kazakh supplies in 2023, following Berlin's ban on Russian pipeline imports.

The latest blow came last week, when Russian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak announced a suspension of Kazakh oil transit through Druzhba effective May 1, attributing the halt to a shortage of "technical capacity."

The mood in Schwedt is one of mounting dread.

"If the lights go out at PCK, the city dies," a Schwedt resident told Ruptly. "We do not want to go back to the 19th century." Another resident warned that a fuel price hike if the flow stopped could even spark "unrest."

Kazakh authorities have acknowledged the disruption and indicated they intend to reroute crude shipments through Russian Baltic and Black Sea ports — though the workaround comes at a steep operational cost.

Shifting to sea-based transport would force the PCK plant to run at just 65% to 70% capacity, the refinery's council member Danny Ruthenburg told a German broadcaster, pointing to constrained infrastructure at the port of Rostock. "That would mean we would have to shut down individual production lines, which would inevitably lead to staff reductions," he said.

Kazakh Energy Minister Yerlan Akkenzhenov drew a direct line between the disruption and ongoing Ukrainian strikes on Russian soil. Speaking on the margins of an ecology forum in Astana, he said: "That is most likely connected to the recent strikes on Russian infrastructure."

Ukraine's military has conducted a sustained campaign targeting critical Russian energy infrastructure using drones, hitting oil refineries and key transit nodes. Last month, Ukrainian forces struck a hub operated by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) at the Russian port of Novorossiysk — a critical artery used to funnel Kazakh oil to markets across Europe and Asia.

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