Bulgarian lawmakers are set to vote Thursday on ending imports of Russian crude, bringing the country in line with other European Union members, according to Bloomberg.
The move will force Lukoil PJSC’s local refinery, the biggest in southeast Europe, to look for alternative feedstock. That’s a tall order since the plant processes almost entirely Russian crude, and the most obvious replacement barrels — from Kazakhstan — are already in demand in neighboring Romania.
Bulgaria and a handful of other EU countries are exempt from the bloc’s ban on Russian crude imports until the end of 2024, but Sofia may bring that forward. Lawmakers will vote on curbing the use of Russian oil at Lukoil’s refinery to 80% by the end of this year, and phasing it out completely by next October.
“The question of moving off Russian oil for the refinery is mainly a logistics question,” Finance Minister Assen Vassilev said in an interview late Wednesday. “In order to move to non-Black Sea oil, the actual storage capacity needs to be increased substantially — maybe doubled — so that the refinery can work 20, 30 days potentially without a tanker coming in.”
Shipments of Russian Urals crude across the Black Sea to Bulgaria have risen in recent weeks, topping 180,000 barrels a day, three times the level seen earlier this year. Alternatives include Kazakh crude sent via the Russian port of Novorossiysk, but a Kazakh-owned refinery in Romania — which halted Russian imports last year — already takes some of that supply.
Bulgaria may need to look further afield to the Middle East or North Africa to replace Russian barrels at Lukoil’s refinery, whose output accounts for most of the Balkan country’s diesel and gasoline supplies.