Romania risks a major crisis on the fuel market after Kazakhstan, where 63% of imports come from, interrupted crude oil deliveries, warns economic consultant Adrian Negrescu.

“Romania risks a major crisis on the fuel market after Kazakhstan, where 63% of imports come from, interrupted crude oil deliveries. The Romanian fuel market is entering a period of unprecedented crisis, after, starting yesterday, crude oil deliveries through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium system to the Novorossiisk terminal were interrupted. We will feel the effects directly at the pump. What we anticipated a few months ago, that if the Kazakhs stop deliveries we risk having a fuel shortage, risks becoming a reality,” Negrescu wrote on his Facebook page.

The Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) pipeline has stopped receiving oil from Kazakhstan after suspending crude oil loading on ships on Monday due to attacks on tankers at its Black Sea terminal, three industry sources told Reuters on Tuesday evening.

In the context, Adrian Negrescu explained that the CPC system is not just any transport route, but the main artery through which Kazakhstan exports its crude oil to world markets. The pipeline, about 1,500 kilometers long, connects fields in western Kazakhstan – including in the Caspian Sea area – to the maritime terminal near the Russian port of Novorossiisk, from where the oil is loaded onto tankers via three floating unloading points, located about five kilometers from the coast, according to Agerpres.

This system carries about 80% of Kazakhstan’s total oil exports, the 12th-largest oil producer in the world, with an extraction of about 1.8-1.9 million barrels per day, the economic consultant said. In 2024 alone, the pipeline transported 63 million tons of oil, of which 55 million tons came from Kazakhstan itself, he said.

“Although it crosses Russian territory to reach Novorossiisk, Kazakh crude oil is certified as being of Kazakh origin and is not subject to Western sanctions imposed on Moscow – an essential technical detail that explains why Romania and other European states continued to buy this crude oil without legal restrictions, even after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. Romania, according to data available for 2025, covers approximately 77% of its crude oil needs from imports, the rest coming from domestic production. Of these imports, approximately 63% come from Kazakhstan, the main supplier of crude oil to the Romanian market. Doing the calculation, it results that approximately half of all crude oil processed in Romanian refineries is, in fact, of Kazakh origin. The rest of the needs are covered, mainly, from Azerbaijan, Norway, Libya and other smaller suppliers,” the quoted post states.

Negrescu recalls that both major refineries operating on Romanian territory depend, to a greater or lesser extent, on this flow. Petromidia, controlled by the Kazakh national oil company, is supplied almost entirely with Kazakh crude oil, received through the Midia port, operated by Rompetrol. Petrobrazi, the OMV Petrom refinery, also uses Kazakh crude oil, although to a lesser extent, the rest of the requirement arriving through the port of Constanța, from other sources.

“For this very reason, any disruption to crude oil exports from Kazakhstan or transport through the CPC terminal in Novorossiisk can have significant effects on the supply of Romanian refineries and, implicitly, on the entire domestic fuel market – from the effective availability of diesel and gasoline, to the final price paid by drivers at the pump. We have been warning about this scenario for several months now, when politicians were telling us to stay calm, that we have secure sources of supply,” the economist argues.

Under these circumstances, he believes that Parliament should put the fuel issue on the front page of the decisions in the extraordinary session and decide to declare a state of energy emergency.

“If the authorities in Bucharest do not take urgent measures, we risk waking up with a fuel crisis like we have never had before. Parliament should put the fuel issue on the front page of the decisions in the extraordinary session and decide to declare a state of energy emergency. In the scenario in which the Kazakhs continue the blockade, it is not excluded that we will end up restricting consumption if we do not find alternative sources of oil and especially diesel, where we import 80% of what we need,” Negrescu concluded.