Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on June 30, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 23, 2026
Add as preferred source on GoogleOrlen will cease purchasing Russian oil for its Czech refinery, ending its last contract with Rosneft and marking a shift in Central Europe's oil supply.
WARSAW (Reuters) -Polish refiner Orlen will not buy Russian oil for its Czech refinery after June 30, Chief Executive Ireneusz Fafara said on Monday.
The contract with Rosneft for Russian oil to be supplied to the Litvinov refinery in the Czech Republic was the last one linking Orlen to Russian oil, it said in a statement.
"We freed Central Europe from Russian oil today," Fafara told a news conference.
The Czech Republic had said in April that it had become fully independent of Russian oil supplies for the first time in its history following the completion of capacity upgrades on the TAL pipeline coming from the west.
Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Czech government has sought to end its partial dependence on the Druzhba pipeline, which has been delivering supplies from Russia for decades and has accounted for about half the country's annual oil imports.
At the end of last year Czech pipeline operator MERO completed an upgrade along the Transalpine (TAL) pipeline, which carries oil from tankers in the Italian port of Trieste to Germany, where it feeds into the Ingolstadt–Kralupy–Litvinov (IKL) pipeline to the Czech Republic.
Orlen said that currently, Czech refineries are supplied with crude oil from, among others, the North Sea and Mediterranean region, Saudi Arabia, South and North America, and Africa.
(Reporting by Marek Strzelecki, Editing by Louise Heavens)
Orlen will stop purchasing Russian oil for its Czech refinery after June 30.
The last contract was with Rosneft for oil supplied to the Litvinov refinery in the Czech Republic.
The Czech Republic became fully independent of Russian oil supplies after completing capacity upgrades on the TAL pipeline.
Czech refineries are currently supplied with crude oil from the North Sea, Mediterranean region, Saudi Arabia, South and North America, and Africa.
CEO Ireneusz Fafara stated, 'We freed Central Europe from Russian oil today' during a news conference.
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