Germany will sign two contracts to increase oil imports from Kazakhstan for Berlin’s main Schwedt oil refinery, sources told Reuters on Sunday.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will be in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan on Monday and Tuesday, on his first visit to Central Asia as Berlin looks for new markets and sources of energy and minerals in the wake of the Ukraine war.
Under the agreement, a monthly supply of 100,000 metric tonnes of crude oil will be secured until the end of 2025, with a second contract for the supply of up to 50,000 tons per month.
The PCK Schwedt refinery has already been purchasing these additional quantities for three months, but they will now be contractually fixed.
Kazakh oil imports have kept the Schwedt refinery running after a sharp drop in Russian oil supplies following European Union sanctions on Moscow for its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Representatives of the German subsidiary of Russia’s Rosneft , Rosneft Deutschland, which Berlin put under a trusteeship last year, will sign the agreement in the Kazakh capital Astana.
In 2023, Kazakhstan exported 8.5 million tons of oil to Germany, accounting for 11.7% of Germany’s total oil imports, and up from around 6.5 million tons before the Ukraine war.
That jump made Kazakhstan Germany’s third-largest supplier after Norway and the United States, data from Germany’s Federal Statistics Office showed.