Hungary to release 1.8 million barrels of crude oil from strategic reserves

BUDAPEST, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Hungary's government will release about 1.8 million barrels of crude oil from its strategic reserves after a drone attack on the Druzhba pipeline late last month stopped oil flow, according to a government decree published late on Thursday.

Croatia's JANAF pipeline operator, however, said there was no need for Budapest to tap its reserves after Hungary's oil company MOL MOLB.BU said on Friday JANAF must allow transit of Russian seaborne oil to Hungary and Slovakia during the Druzhba outage.

"At this moment, a significant quantity of non-Russian crude oil is being transported via JANAF’s pipeline for MOL Group, while three additional tankers carrying non-Russian oil, also for MOL Group, are on their way to the Omisalj Terminal," JANAF said in a statement.

"There was no need to tap into (their) reserves since oil transport via the JANAF pipeline towards MOL's refineries is being carried out continuously and without delays."

Hungary and Slovakia, which have the only remaining refineries in the EU using Russian oil through Druzhba, have been trying to secure supply since flows were halted on January 27 following what Ukraine said was a Russian drone attack that damaged pipeline infrastructure.

Both countries have blamed Ukraine for the delay in restarting the flows for political reasons.

SCRAMBLE FOR CRUDE SUPPLIES

MOL is entitled to priority access to released crude oil reserves, and it will have access to the freed reserves until April 15 and has to return them by August 24, the Hungarian government decree said.

At the end of January, Hungary had enough crude oil and petroleum product reserves to cover 96 days, according to data on the Hungarian Hydrocarbon Stockpiling Association's website.

As the two countries scramble to ensure supplies, MOL ordered tankers delivering Saudi, Norwegian, Kazakh, Libyan and Russian oil to supply its Hungarian and Slovak refineries and halted diesel deliveries to Ukraine earlier this week.

MOL said that first shipments were expected to arrive at the port of Omisalj in Croatia in early March. After that, it will take a further 5-12 days for the crude oil to reach its refineries.

The Slovak government has also declared an oil emergency situation and has pledged to release 1.825 million barrels of oil following a request from Slovakia's Slovnaft refinery, which is owned by MOL.