On Monday, the Romanian Ministry of Energy declared a crisis-level emergency in crude oil supply, allowing the withdrawal of significant amounts of oil and diesel fuel from the country’s reserves due to contamination at a Turkish oil terminal.

This was reported by Romania Journal, citing Profit.ro.

The emergency was prompted by an incident of contamination at the Turkish terminal Ceyhan, which affected a shipment of crude oil from Azerbaijan destined for the Petrobrazi refinery of OMV Petrom.

BTC Pipeline, the operator of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, reported contamination of several tanks at the terminal with corrosive substances. Consequently, a shipment of Azerbaijani crude oil scheduled to arrive at the port of Constanța was not received, leading to a temporary shortage of crude at Petrobrazi. In light of the situation, it was decided that the quickest solution until a new shipment of imported oil arrived would be to utilize the mandatory reserves established by OMV Petrom under existing legislation.

The order issued by the Ministry of Energy allows OMV Petrom to use 80,000 tons of crude oil and 30,000 tons of diesel fuel from emergency reserves. This reserve was created by the company as part of its legal obligation to maintain a total of 676,248 tons for the current year.

According to the law, the company now has two months to replenish the reserves to meet this obligation.