Russia’s Dirty Oil Crisis Is Worse Than Almost Anyone Predicted
- Flow through Druzhba pipeline still little more than a trickle
- Solution hampered by fight about who’s going to pay the bill
Men walk across a section of the Druzhba crude oil pipeline.
Photographer: John Guillemin/Bloomberg
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For almost four weeks, the tanker Mendeleev Prospect has been anchored idly off the Polish port of Gdansk unable to discharge a $50 million cargo of crude oil.
After any normal voyage the tanker would quickly deliver its 700,000 barrels of Russian crude into a refinery for processing into gasoline, diesel and other petroleum products. But the Mendeleev Prospect is in limbo, the victim of Russia’s unprecedented contaminated crude crisis that’s been spreading chaos though the European oil market for a month.