Crude oil supply via the Druzba pipeline was stopped yesterday. While Poland has strategic crude oil reserves for 30 days of uninterrupted operations of the refineries (and additional fuel reserves for 50-60 days consumption), it is very likely that Poland will make efforts to switch crude purchase to other sources.
Our view: PKN Orlen and Lotos Group are both in a position to replace all oil deliveries from Russia. Altogether they have some crude oil needs of 18-19 mt annually, what is currently supplied with crude transported on tankers through the Gdansk port on the Baltic Sea (Plock is connected with Gdansk through the Pomeranian pipeline). Gdansk terminal is theoretically able to receive some 20 million tones of crude oil per annum, which fully covers the needs of the two refineries. Pomeranian pipeline also have a much higher capacity than Plock refinery’s actual needs. Alternative oil purchases are slightly more expensive than Urals. Although Arab oils are traded some 6-8 US$/bbl below the level of Brent versus the current Brent-Urals discount of 3-4 US$/bbl (Arab Medium currently priced 7.5 US$/bbl below the Brent for February delivery on FOB Saudi Arabia parity), when taking into account the shipment costs (some US$ 3-4/bbl, we assume) the purchase of Arab crude would be some US$ 0.5-1.0/bbl more expensive than Urals for Lotos and some US$ 1.0-1.5 US$/bbl for PKN. This is due to the fact that PKN originally paid less for the pipeline delivery than Lotos (due to the shorter route) but now it should pay more (also pay for the transport on the Pomeranian pipeline between Gdansk and Plock). Moreover, the Arab quality is not fully the same like Ural, which might lead to adjustments of the Plock refinery. In the meantime Lotos refinery was originally designed to deal with Arab crude and already purchases that quality in smaller quantities.
The financial impact of the change would be US$ 110m per annum for PKN Orlen (this equals to 1.6% of PKN’s market cap) and some US$ 30m for Lotos (1.1% of market cap), according to our draft calculation.