MOSCOW, Dec 20 — Russia’s Transneft has received requests for oil for 2023 from Poland and Germany, the state oil pipeline monopoly’s head told Rossiya-24 TV station, according to TASS news agency.

The EU has pledged to stop buying Russian oil via maritime routes from December 5, with Western nations also imposing price caps on Russian crude oil, but the Druzhba pipeline remains exempt from sanctions.

Transneft’s comments are at odds with suggestions last month that Poland aimed to abandon a deal to buy Russiancrude.

Sources familiar with the talks had told Reuters that Poland was seeking German support for EU sanctions on the Polish-German section of the Druzhba pipeline so that Warsaw could abandon a deal to buy Russian oil next year without paying penalties.

"They announced that they would not take oil from Russia from January 1. And now we have received requests from Polish consumers: give us 3 million tonnes next year, and 360,000 tonnes for December, and Germany has already submitted a request for the first quarter,” Transneft head Nikolay Tokarev was quoted as saying by TASS today.

He also said that the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk has expanded export capacity for low-sulphur oil to 40 million tonnes a year. — Reuters