The Polish oil concern Orlen, which operates the Mazeikiu refinery Orlen Lietuva, plans to use only the oil supplied by the Saudi oil company Saudi Aramco, Lithuanian Energy Minister Dainius Kreivis has announced.
“Orlen is abandoning Russian oil and plans to produce only Aramco oil from Saudi Arabia,” Crawley told reporters on Friday.
Until now, Orlen Lietuva has mainly processed oil imported from Russia.
This week, Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonīte told reporters that Orlen was going to give up Russian oil altogether in the near future.
At the beginning of March, Audrjus Daugnora, the company’s Deputy General Manager, pointed out that Orlen Lietuva has been diversifying its sources of raw materials and processing not only Russian oil since 2014, so it would not be difficult to give it up.
According to him, in recent years, about two-thirds of refined oil has come from Russia, but now the ratio is “reversing”.
Orlen announced earlier this month that it had agreed with Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Aramco to purchase an additional five North Sea oil tankers and some of that oil would be diverted to the Mazeikiu plant.
Last year, the Polish oil group reported that it buys 57% of its crude oil from Russia under long-term supply contracts, another about 8% from Saudi Arabia, and buys the rest on the spot market.
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