The Czech Republic and Slovakia have agreed to invest around CZK 1 billion, or approximately €40 million, in the technical upgrade of the Druzhba oil pipeline to enable reverse oil flows from the Czech Republic to Slovakia. The announcement was made after talks in Prague by Slovak Economy Minister Denisa Saková and Czech officials. According to Reuters, if implemented, the project would provide Slovakia with an alternative supply route capable of transporting 2–3 million tonnes of oil per year.
The move is a response to the prolonged disruption of Russian oil supplies through the Ukrainian section of the Druzhba pipeline, which has remained suspended since late January following infrastructure damage caused by a Russian strike. Ukraine has stated that repairs require time, while the EU has already offered technical and financial assistance to help restore transit. At the same time, Budapest and Bratislava have publicly pressured Kyiv, accusing it of delaying the resumption of flows.
The new initiative effectively amounts to an attempt to create a western backup supply corridor for Slovakia by using already modernized Czech infrastructure. Reuters notes that the Czech Republic ended its dependence on Druzhba in 2025 after expanding the alternative TAL route, which connects the country to oil supplies via Italy and Germany. Prague is now prepared to use that new configuration to redirect oil onward to Slovakia if necessary.
According to participants in the talks, the project will not deliver immediate results: implementation is expected to take two to three years. At the initial stage, volumes would likely be limited to emergency-level supplies — tens of thousands of tonnes per month — but over time the route’s capacity could rise to 2–3 million tonnes annually, becoming a significant factor in Slovakia’s energy security.
In the broader regional context, this is already the second infrastructure step taken by Central Europe in recent days to reduce risks in fuel supply chains. A day earlier, Hungary and Slovakia agreed to build a 127-kilometre pipeline between MOL refineries in Bratislava and Százhalombatta, which is expected to transport up to 1.5 million tonnes of gasoline and diesel per year. Completion of that project is expected in the first half of 2027.
As a result, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary are simultaneously building a new architecture of energy resilience — from emergency reverse flows of crude oil to new fuel links between refineries. For investors, this signals that even within the EU, countries in the region are accelerating investment in critical pipeline infrastructure amid a combination of wartime risks, instability in Russian oil imports, and political uncertainty surrounding the future of Druzhba.
The significance of the announcement is reinforced by the fact that Slovakia and Hungary remain the only EU countries still importing Russian oil, while also opposing EU plans to phase out those imports in the near term. This is why investment in the reverse-flow mode of Druzhba appears not merely as a technical solution, but as part of a broader strategy to diversify supply routes in Europe’s new energy reality.
