“Sanctions that end up hurting you more don’t make sense,” the 76-year-old said. An oil embargo “won’t hurt Russia – they’ll just sell the oil to someone else.” Patz worked for 16 years at an oil refinery in the northeastern German city of Schwedt that risks becoming collateral damage in Europe’s campaign for punitive measures against Russia. At issue is the EU’s ban on Russian oil imports, which is designed to deprive President Vladimir Putin of revenue to fund his war in Ukraine. The measure, which takes effect on January 1, has broad support in Germany but has thrown the future of the Schwedt refinery into doubt. “People here feel like they are a pawn being sacrificed in some game,” said Jens Koeppen, a Christian Democrat lawmaker who represents the city. Former refinery worker Ursula Patz says sanctions ‘will not hurt Russia’ © Hannes Jung/FT Schwedt’s PCK refinery, which employs around 1,200 people © Hannes Jung/FT The issue is the refinery’s dependence on Russian oil. It is located at the top of the “Druzhba” pipeline, which carries crude approximately 4,000 kilometers from Almetyevsk in central Russia directly to Schwedt. And the plant is configured to work with Russia’s main high-sulfur Urals crude. Complicating matters further, however, is that it is Russian-owned: Kremlin-controlled oil company Rosneft controls 54 percent of its shares and has little interest in processing crude from other sources. Many in Schwedt fear the refinery, known as PCK, will be forced to close if it loses access to Russian oil. “That would be a nightmare scenario,” said the city’s mayor, Annekathrin Hoppe. “People here fear for their existence.” Schwedt’s largest employer, PCK, has a workforce of 1,200. Hundreds more work in ancillary services, building ducts, heat exchangers, pumps and cooling units for the plant, Hoppe said. Mayor of Schwedt Annekathrin Hoppe: “People here fear for their existence” © Hannes Jung/FT “All these jobs will be affected and all these people have families,” he said. In addition, “around 80 percent of the city is supplied with district heating from PCK’s power plant.” It’s not yet clear, he said, how homes will be heated if it goes out. Schwedt residents fear a repeat of the economic dislocation in the region after German reunification in 1990. “They are facing a second deindustrialization of eastern Germany,” Koeppen said. “And they won’t take it lying down.” Schwedt reflects the highs and lows of the region. The city was almost completely destroyed in the Soviet advance during the second world war. Then, in the 1950s, young people from all over East Germany converged on Schwedt to rebuild the city and build the PCK, short for “petrochemical kombinat,” or combine. Schwedt embodies the close ties between Russia and the GDR. Local newspapers in the 1960s reported the excitement when PCK was connected to the newly built Druzhba pipeline in 1963. PCK company publication celebrates the first deliveries of Russian oil via the Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline in 1963 © Schwedt City Archive “The oil has arrived!” said a front page headline in PCK’s ‘Young Builder’ edition. “Glory and honor to the builders of the longest pipeline in the world!” Druzhba, which continues to supply a quarter of Germany’s crude oil, has always had a positive meaning for Patz. “It means friendship in Russian — such a beautiful word,” she said. “It means something good.” Soon after its launch in 1964, PCK established itself as the region’s leading supplier of gasoline, diesel, jet kerosene and fuel oil. Large consumers — such as Berlin International Airport — still depend on its products. So there was widespread outrage in Schwedt when Germany signed the embargo. Some questioned why it had not followed the examples of Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which are also linked to the Druzhba, but negotiated temporary exemptions from the import ban, citing a lack of alternatives to Russian oil. “People just can’t understand why Germany voluntarily decided on this embargo,” Hoppe said. “Everyone is condemning this war, but people are also fighting for their jobs.” The resentment has been seized upon by populists on the right and the left. The hard-right Alternative for Germany has put up posters in the city with the slogan: “If the PCK dies, so does Schwedt.” Chancellor Olaf Solz insists the government is working to safeguard PCK’s future. Officials have promised that it will continue to refine oil next year and into 2024 and that jobs will be protected. Schwedt, in the state of Brandenburg, embodied the close ties between Moscow and the GDR © Hannes Jung/FT Citizens from all over the GDR helped rebuild the city after World War II © Hannes Jung/FT To this end, they are exploring alternative ways of supplying the refinery, mainly via a pipeline from the north-eastern port of Rostock. But Koeppen, the lawmaker, said that won’t solve the problem. The pipeline can only carry 19,000 of the 32,000 tonnes of oil per day needed by PCK, he said. “The port of Rostock is also not deep enough to receive oil tankers,” he said. The oil would have to be brought in at Wilhelmshaven in the North Sea and transferred to smaller ships, he added. “And we don’t have the ships.”

PCK also hopes to receive oil from Kazakhstan and is considering supplies through the Polish port of Gdansk. “But the Poles say they don’t want to supply us while the plant still belongs to Rosneft,” said a PCK worker, who declined to be named. “And we can’t just brush that aside.” Long-term Berlin wants to secure PCK’s future by turning it into a “green refinery”. Two companies — Enertrag, a wind power company, and Verbio, a biofuel producer already active in Schwedt — have expressed interest in taking stakes in PCK. Hoppe said that with their involvement, the refinery could produce “green hydrogen” which could be combined with CO2 captured from the atmosphere to produce sustainable synthetic fuels – including “electronic kerosene” for airplanes. But it will take years for PCK to make the transition. Meanwhile, an oil embargo looms that could have fatal short-term consequences for the refinery. “Three months have passed [since the embargo was agreed] and we’re still hearing the same promises,” Hoppe said. “Time is up.”