Hungary to Release 1.8 Million Barrels of Crude From Reserves

Hungary's government will release about 1.8 million barrels of crude oil from its strategic reserves after a drone attack on the Druzhba pipeline late last month stopped oil flow, according to a government decree published late on Thursday.

Hungary and Slovakia, which have the only remaining refineries in the European Union using Russian oil through Druzhba, have been trying to secure supply since flows were halted on January 27 after what Ukraine said was a Russian drone attack that damaged pipeline infrastructure.

Both countries have blamed Ukraine for the delayin restarting the flows for political reasons.

Hungary's oil company MOL is entitled to priority access to released crude oil reserves, and it will have access to the freed reserves until April 15 and has to return them by August 24, the decree said.

At the end of January, Hungary had enough crude oil and petroleum product reserves to cover 96 days, according to data on the Hungarian Hydrocarbon Stockpiling Association's website.

As the two countries scramble to ensure supplies, MOL ordered tankers delivering Saudi, Norwegian, Kazakh, Libyan and Russian oil to supply its Hungarian and Slovak refineries and halted diesel supplies to Ukraine earlier this week.

MOL said that first shipments were expected to arrive at the port of Omisalj in Croatia in early March. After that, it will take a further 5-12 days for the crude oil to reach its refineries.

On Friday, MOL said in a statement that Croatian pipeline operator JANAF must allow transit of Russian seaborne oil to Hungary and Slovakia during the Druzhba outage, and this is in line with European and U.S. sanctions.

The Slovak government has also declared an oil emergency situation and has pledged to release 1.825 million barrels of oil following a request from Slovakia's Slovnaft refinery, which is owned by MOL.

(Reuters)