Contaminated Urals cargoes stranded in Europe head for Asia
Cargoes were contaminated by excessive levels of organic chloride on the 1.4m bpd Druzhba pipeline. This conduit originates in the Urals region and supplies Urals crude to inland refineries across eastern Europe via Belarus, and the port of Ust-Luga via the Baltic pipeline trunk
With some contaminated cargoes of crude from the Urals headed to China and the Bahamas, the remaining oil cargoes are stranded in Europe while Asian buyers are sought