Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to MOL's Q3 2025 results conference call. My name is Márton Teremi, Head of Investor Relations. The top management representatives on today's call are: Dr. György Bacsa, Executive Vice President of Group Strategic Operations and Corporate Development; Dr. Ákos Székely, Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Zsombor Márton, Executive Vice President of Upstream; Mr. Gabriel Szabó, Executive Vice President of Downstream; Mr. Péter Ratatics, Executive Vice President of Consumer Services; and Mr. József Simola, Executive Vice President of Circular Economy Services. Before handing over, let me share some technical information. We continue to use Microsoft Teams as a platform to hold our conference call. The presentation can be downloaded from our website at molgroup.info, and we will be sharing the slides in Teams too.
After the presentation, we will move to a Q&A session where you will have the chance to ask questions by using the Raise Your Hand function of Teams. Please keep yourself muted throughout the call, except when asking a question. I would also like to draw your attention to the cautionary statement on slide number two. Now we can start the content part with Dr. György Bacsa taking us through the highlights of the third quarter.
Good morning, everyone. After the third quarter, we will discuss in more detail with my colleagues that the delivery was mainly in line with our expectations, especially outstanding performance in wholesale and retail, and significant stable performance in upstream. Our clean CCS EBITDA performance in the first nine months neared $2.5 billion. However, I think the main message that you can also see on our side is that because of the fire incident on October 20, so last month, we have revised certain guidelines that we issued previously. The assessment of the impact is still ongoing, so these definitely should be taken as preliminary guidances. One is that we estimate that this year we will process 500,000 tonnes less crude in total. That will also have a clean CCS EBITDA effect, which that's why we revised our EBITDA guidance around $3 billion straightforward.
We would like to indicate that our EBITDA guidance has come down from the previous guidances. There is an uncertain external environment, several challenges, regulatory changes, moving targets ahead of us, but the revision of our guidance was mainly driven, as I mentioned, because of the incident in October and its effects on our Danube refinery operation. We also revised the CapEx, and we now think that the group CapEx will be around $1.5 billion for the full year. Let me go to the next slide. As I just mentioned in my first sentence, the overall delivery was very strong in the third quarter. The external environment was favorable for refining and retail as well, and the upstream posted a robust result. The third quarter clean CCS EBITDA rose by 15% year on year. The upstream EBITDA stable results, 3% quarter-on-quarter basis growth.
Downstream clean CCS EBITDA, 51% increase year on year. Consumer services EBITDA, third quarter year on year, 28% increase. Circular Economy Services posted a loss of $64 million, mainly due to seasonal factors for the third quarter. Some operational and other developments. We can also announce favorable developments in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. The export crude oil pipeline to Turkey has been reopened, which is a very strategic and essential step for our operation in the Shaikan oil field. The gas expansion project was completed in the Cormor gas field, allowing for higher processing capacity. We also announced that we will change the group's legal structure. We think that the new structure will be more fit to MOL's operating and business structure and also granting more flexibility.
We will have an extraordinary general meeting on the 27th of November this month, and some details about the incident in the Danube refinery. As I mentioned previously, this was one of the most important effect drivers of the revision of our guidances. The damage assessment is still ongoing, and it would be premature to jump to conclusions with regards to the causes and the potential financial effects of the fire. We also cannot provide now an estimate of the CapEx needed to restore and the time needed to complete the repair works. What we know now is that the AV3 unit was affected by the fire. This is the largest of the three atmospheric and vacuum distillation units in the refinery, and one of the most essential units used to separate crude oil into different fractions by heating.
Now, other units of the Danube refinery are successfully restarted, and the refinery is expected to run at 50-55% capacity. That means that monthly we lose roughly 250-300 kilotonnes capacity. We tried to adapt to the situation, and now the production at Bratislava and Rijeka refineries are enhanced. Still, we expect that at group level, we will see roughly 20-25% total processing capacity reduction. This is a lost opportunity, and it will affect our EBITDA performance. That's why we revised the EBITDA guidance as well. The estimates for the still ongoing assessments are ongoing. I also would like to highlight that all refineries are insured, and the discussion and the assessment by the insurance provider is also ongoing. The insurance extends not only to the direct damages, but also to the offers or interlocks as well.
However, it would be also premature to conclude how much extent we can recover from the insurances. If you go to the next slide. Some of our sustainability-related performances, MOL's safety ratio deteriorated to 1.44 in the first nine months of 2025. It is significantly worse than a year ago when it was 1.25. The increase was due to a Pakistan incident involving four contractors. There are also a number of small hand injuries and slip and trip-related injuries, which also draw the attention that the awareness program is very important for HSE performance. Although it was not mentioned, but I would like to exclude any speculations that this deteriorating performance in HSE has anything to do with the Danube refinery fire. That fire was handled professionally. No one was injured. No one was affected. Personal injuries were not affected.
With all that, I would like to give the floor to Dr. Ákos Székely to discuss the financials. Thank you, György, and good morning. Clean CCS EBITDA amounted to $974 million in the third quarter, which means an increase of 15% compared to the same period last year. As usual, the heads of each key segment will provide detailed insight, detailed information into their respective areas they manage. Let me focus on the three segments that fall beside their scope. First, gas midstream. The EBITDA reached $51 million, marking a year-on-year decrease of 10%. While market demand remained robust, profitability deteriorated due to the lower regulated price levels and cost inflation, and this is in line with our expectation.
Regarding the corporate and other segments, the $46 million US dollars of net cost during the third quarter was absolutely in line with the three-year historic average quarterly charge of HU cost. Third, the intersegment elimination weighted on the EBITDA by $22 million US dollars, mainly due to the higher gas inventory elimination owing to the decrease in gas price. Total CapEx amounted to $396 million US dollars in the third quarter of 2025. Organic CapEx year-to-date is at $840 million, lower by 23% year on year. The lower CapEx was predominantly driven by less turnarounds in downstream, leading to sustained expenditures being materially lower. Gross and efficiency CapEx in the third quarter was higher year on year, as upstream was still driven by ACG CapEx while downstream spending continued on crude diversification, the DCU in Rijeka, and several other petrochemical projects.
Clean CCS EBITDA of $2,491 million in the first nine months of 2025 resulted in a net income of $775 million. Regarding the components of the bridge, let's see the details as usual on the next slide. The clean CCS effect showed a negative number of $90 million in the third quarter, which was due to the volatility of oil price and inventory management overall, resulting in decreasing effective average prices. The cleaning of COT cost, on the other hand, also caused a negative effect, as seasonally usual in the third and also in the fourth quarter. DD&A amounted to $404 million for the quarter of 2025, slightly lower than in the previous quarter. The improvement was due to one-off effects in the second quarter not present in the third one, but this was partly offset by the strengthening of the forint.
With the forint appreciating, as I said, also there again was a gain on the financial line of $6 million. The next item is the income from associate, which reached $70 million, mainly driven by mostly the ordinary course of business in joint venture companies. Finally, the income tax amounted to $164 million in the first quarter, an increase of $37 million compared to the second quarter. Although the higher profit before tax is the main explanation of the increase, the effective tax rate is still at a high level of 33%. Industry taxes were at $31 million US dollar higher than in Q2. The explanation behind the Robinhood tax in Hungary was higher, and because of the better results at Slovnaft leading to higher special levy, it caused an additional $9 million compared to the previous quarter.
Deferred tax expense was also higher due to the deferred tax assets on loss carry forward decreased thanks to the higher loss utilization in Q3 2025. On the other hand, the solidarity taxation that led to a one-off expense of $50 million in Q2 did not weigh on the results in Q3. This is also something we already discussed during our last call. Let's look at how the cash flow evolved during the quarter. Operating cash flow before working capital surpassed $1.8 billion in the first nine months of the year. The change in working capital supported the cash flow of the year so far with the release of $366 million, mainly driven by seasonal factors. I would like to highlight one element: the inventories were depleted during the major turnarounds in downstream during the summer. With that, the operating cash flow reached $2,177 million.
Let me finish the financial part looking at the balance sheet. The net debt improved by more than $600 million compared to the end of 2024. This reflects the strong cash generation mostly in the third quarter and also the more rational taxation that we already see in earlier years. The net deposition has improved from an already comfortable level and stays at 0.45 times EBITDA and 9.5% gearing ratio. Now I would like to hand over to Gabriel to discuss the downstream performance. Thank you.
Good morning. Thank you very much, Ákos. Let me guide you through the Q3 performance of the downstream. In the reported period, we delivered a clean CCS EBITDA amounted to $452 million, and this is a 51% increase year on year. On the refining side, external factors were more supportive. Fuel demand was broadly unchanged compared to last year, so it was mostly European supply-side issues that drove margins higher. The disruption in imports to Europe and also longer-than-usual outages in other refineries in Europe supported fuel crack spreads, especially on the diesel side. Regarding volumes, crude processing showed a small decrease, while sales volumes improved year on year. Turning to petrochemicals, the external environment is still characterized by rather weak demand, high feedstock prices, and strong import from Asia.
Petrochemicals' EBITDA reported a loss of $58 million, and this is a reflection of these unfavorable factors I mentioned. Now, let's have a look at the external environment, which we can see on the next slide. Yeah, regarding the external environment, the normalization process of the refining margin has been suspended in the third quarter. There were more factors there: geopolitical factors around the Middle East, the fall in Russian diesel exports, outages, and maintenance have led to this supply tightness, mainly what I mentioned in the diesel area. Regarding the last quarter, what we see currently is that in October, there was a refining margin of $10.7 per barrel, and what we see is that this refining margin is further increasing, so it's almost double today.
The reason behind this is still the strong maintenance season, mainly the Arab region, the further sanctioning, so the 19th package in the U.K. OFEC, so U.S. administration sanctions are causing the increasing refining margin. Regarding petrochemicals, the relief in most petrochemicals' margin was short-lived. In the region, the petrochemical market continues to be characterized by subdued demand weighing on pet chem product prices. Recent steam cracker closures in Europe and in China reflect the hardship in the business in general, but have not yet resulted in visible impact to our markets. My last slide showing the year-on-year components of the EBITDA change. Refining price and margin environment contributed $152 million to EBITDA year-on-year, while the drop in pet chem price and margin environment had a negative impact of 38.
Higher volumes' contribution was $84 million, and within the category of other, of $47 million, there are items impacted mainly by the inflation pressure, so ongoing wage and maintenance cost increase. With that, I would like to hand over to Péter to continue with the consumer services.
Thank you, Gabriel. Good morning to everyone. Consumer services delivered $370 million of EBITDA in the third quarter this year, so this is 28% higher than a year ago. Practically all major building blocks or lines have contributed positively and nicely to the result. Even I can highlight here that though the OPEX is negative, I think we worked a lot in order to mitigate the wage inflation and the minimum wage increases in practically all countries. This $11 million OPEX increase I consider rather as a result of a good management effort. The major contributor, though, was the fuel margin, which drove the growth. Better condition in two countries, actually, that is the ultimate reason for this significant increase in Croatia and also in Romania for different reasons, due to different reasons, but the unit margins were increased significantly.
Detraction in the non-fuel margin contributed to $9 million, which is also a good contribution. Also, on the one-off items and the FX contribution was positive this time. Let's go deeper and flip the slide to the next one where I can go deeper into the volumes where you can see and also what Gabriel has already mentioned. The fuel volumes practically were on a stable level, though it was a bit minus. The country contribution, so the country constellation, was a bit different. In some countries like Hungary or Slovakia, the consumption was decreased, however, it was nicely offset by some of the other countries, mainly from the Southeastern European countries, and also the Czech Republic this time contributed nicely to the volumes.
Looking at the margins, as I have already mentioned, fuel price regulations have been lifted in July in Croatia in the middle of the tourist season, so we were able to capture a significant contribution from that country. Also, the wholesale market structure has shifted in Romania to allow better margins for the retailers, which is also a good development in this business segment. If you turn the page to the non-fuel part, then broadly speaking, we have been experiencing deceleration, at least from a percentage point of view. However, if you check the sales quantum increase, this $32 million additional sales increase in the main season where we altogether accounted for $582 million turnover on the non-fuel part, I consider this as a strong performance.
It is also visible now that the consolidation of our business has reached its maturity since the margin growth pace is practically on the level or even a bit below the sales increase, which is usually the maturity phase or maturity evolution of a good retailer. All in all, I think now the attention should go towards new selling points. We tested well a few kiosk type of operations without fuel sales, and those just performed very well here in Hungary. That is what I will explain a bit more after the next quarter next time. Thank you very much for your attention, and I would give the word to Zsolt Pethő. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. Upstream's a bit diamanted in the Q3 2025 to $285 million, marking a 3% increase quarter on quarter. What we can say is that largely the quarter is flat on production, flat on EBITDA, and flat on cash flow, both quarter on quarter and year on year. This shows a stable internal performance, which fully offsets our natural decline, especially in the major asset portfolio. The price environment had a little impact on our business this quarter. The realized prices remained broadly stable, with gas prices having a slight decrease, oil prices a minor increase in dollar terms. The positive development of the quarter is already mentioned, but I would reiterate the good news and a bit detail it later. The export pipeline reopening in Iraq at Shaikan and the pearl capacity increase project started the first gas and ramping up of the capacities.
If we move to the unit free cash flow slide, you can see that the unit economics are also very stable. We can say also stayed flat with the $23 unit free cash flow per barrel oil equivalent. Again, this shows a robust cash generation capability and demonstrates that the division is doing strong efforts to keep the profitability for the portfolio. If we move to the next slide, again, flat EBITDA year on year and quarter on quarter. All the effects on the waterfall remain at or below $5 million mark. You can see that this is a stable internal performance, again, with a bit of a detailed next slide where I can explain through the production. If we look at the production in the third quarter averaged 92.3 thousand barrels of oil equivalent, that's slightly lower by a thousand barrels per day compared to the second quarter.
I would highlight here three major contributors. One was a series of outages in Hungary. External and internal factors resulted in roughly one and a half thousand lower performance. That is, we consider temporarily, so it will come back in the coming quarters. Production in Shaikan was also lower due to drone attacks in the region, and it was offset by increase in Azerbaijan and Pakistan having the strong delivery on the international portfolio. All the other assets actually delivered around the same and have the stability. Again, a bit more detail on the updates in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. You might remember that it was an export line closure to Turkey from March 2023, and after two and a half years, an agreement between IOCs, Kurdistan Regional Government, and the federal government of Iraq was signed with the aim to restart the international Kurd exports to Shaikan.
This shows that there is an improvement in the price realization as well. You see the framework working currently, but the next months will be the test of the payments and the commercial term realizations as well. Again, we have 20% in the Shaikan block, so we expect a significant increment on commercial realization. On the Cormor field, the gas expansion project was completed and having a capacity of almost 50% increment and extension. Ramp-up started. We expect that by the beginning of next year, we will realize that extra volumes and potentially also extra sales as well.
If we move to the last slide, what I would highlight here is the third quarter CapEx, which increased by 16% year on year, out of which that's like $6 million in absolute terms, out of which 6 percentage points is increase attributable to weakening of the dollar, while much of the rest is driven by scheduling of maintenance works this year in different periods and a different manner, having a Q3 higher share this time. We see that we have a continuous shift in the composition of the production towards higher OpEx assets that is also slightly raising our unit OpEx, where we do serious efforts both on energy and both on also production maintenance projects to offset those increments. Again, we see that single-digit percentage ranges, the OpEx increase itself, which is a very disciplined work considering inflationary pressures.
With regards to CapEx, spending accelerated somewhat in the third quarter, but again, it's like flat. That's a very disciplined year-to-date spending in the first nine months of 2024, 2025. With that, I would give the floor to József to discuss the circular economy services financials. Thank you, Zsombor. Good morning, everyone. The CES EBITDA for Q3 was $64 million. We generally expected a weaker quarter due to the DRS seasonality. The reason for this is that a higher volume of drinks and so DRS-relevant packaging material is put on the market in Q2 when we realized the revenues. A large share of the redemption takes place in Q2, increasing relatively higher cost. Clearly, there were other items negatively contributing to the minus $64 million. One of them is the relatively lower material sales and somewhat lower market material prices.
Also because this is a dominantly foreign business, the strengthening of the forint to the dollar caused around $6 million negative contribution compared to Q3 2024. I also like to point out that the last year number, the plus $16 million, is not a good basis for comparison because that included several large positive one-off impacts. Going ahead, we expect to see the recent positive EPR fee regulation change and the impact of the efficiency improvements having a positive contribution to the EBITDA in the next quarter. As for the CapEx, year-to-date spending is $43 million, somewhat lower than last year, and we expect this trend to continue this year and next year as the large CapEx item at the start of the setting up the network of the reverse vending machines in the country, around 4,000 pieces, is mostly completed.
We do not foresee any larger CapEx item in the future, except for one potential major item. We are working on planning on a waste-to-energy plant or waste incinerator collocated with the Százhalombatta refinery. Preparations are ongoing. If we go for this, that would be in the ballpark of $500 million investment and with a final investment decision potentially coming mid-next year. With this, I like to hand the word back to Marci for the Q&A session.
Thank you very much. That completes the formal part of our presentation. We'd like to now open the floor for the Q&A discussion. Please indicate if you'd like to ask a question by using the raise your hand function on Teams. Okay, Anna, please go ahead.
Good day. Thank you for taking my question. First would be around the guidance. So around $3 billion of EBITDA for this year would suggest that the EBITDA for fourth quarter should drop, should basically half from the strong third quarter. And yes, obviously there was a fire and there will be an impact on the utilization rates. But as you mentioned, the refining margin has stayed so high and production on the upstream side is pretty good. Can you please comment around where do you see this huge drop coming from in fourth quarter? That would be my first question. Another question around Slovnaft, there were some contradicting headlines in the news we saw around possible fire at Slovnaft. Can you just confirm that there were no issues?
The third one is around the crude supplies and whether this new round of sanctions impacted your current crude supplies and what you expect in 2026. Thank you.
I would like to ask József to answer the first question, please.
I think regarding first on the guidance, that we divided down to $3 billion, it means that the previous guidance was exceeding $3 billion with a couple of hundred million dollar extra EBITDA expectations. As I mentioned, annually we will have an outage of 250-300 kilotons. Of course, its financial impact is just an assessment because first of all, it depends how much we can procure from our other refineries. That is why I mentioned the group refining capacities, which is strong, and Slovnaft is fortunately up and running at full capacity. There is no fire. I would like to immediately answer your second question. There was no fire and there is no issue around that one. Definitely we will use all internal sources, not only just the reserves, but also the capacities. We are also using the third-party trading opportunities to cover it.
Exactly how much margin loss it will cause, it's hard to estimate. That's why the guidance is rather cautious. We believe still a strong performance, a stable performance, fully in line with our, I would say now our standard $3 billion EBITDA delivery, which our integrated model is proving in bad times and in big challenges. Definitely we should have a kind of revision, downward revision, not being able to properly calculate penny by penny how much margin we cover from trading, from increased capacity utilization. There is an outage in Dufy. It's nothing to hide about it. There is a strong work to recover, to restore, and to assess the time and CapEx needed for that. I think that's for sure. Regarding the crude supply part, I ask Gabriel to comment.
Regarding the crude supply, we do not, for the next year, I think we do not count with any interruptions.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Tamás, please go ahead.
Hi, Thomas Kochowski, Santander. A couple of questions. The first one, again on fire. I realize that you declined to give any precise comment, but when it comes to repair works, do you think it's going to take months, quarters, or years to rebuild the refinery? This is the first one. The second is on your consumer services business line. You mentioned that right now it's already a matured business, and you also said that you are testing some kiosks. Do I understand correctly that you are contemplating whether to enter just a grocery convenience business separate from your fuel stations? That was the second. Yeah, those two.
Thank you. Let me start with the fire. Yeah, definitely the fire case in AV3 units in our Százhalombatta refinery is a critical issue in our operation. Let me share with you some facts of what happened. On the evening, late evening on October 20, a major fire broke out in the pump station of AV3 unit in Danube refinery. The fire burned for more than 10 hours until it was extinguished with the firefighters. As Mr. Bacsa mentioned, there was no personal injury. This pump station is the kind of pumping the various fractions at the distillation unit from one tower to another. Without this station, the AV3 unit cannot operate. As it was mentioned, after the fire case, all the other units in Danube refinery were successfully restarted. The refinery is expected to run at 50-55% capacity. As Mr.
Bacsa mentioned, it's causing roughly 300 KTs of crude processing drop per month. What we are doing currently, we are trying to clean the area, but you can imagine that there is a lot of admittance there with the hydrocarbons. As safety first, the works are rather very cautious. Once the hydrocarbons have been removed from the system, we will be able to approach all the pumps, all the rotating aesthetic equipment there to make a proper inspection and the analysis, which will then also answer your question, what is the scope and what is the timeline expected for repair works. I expect that we won't be able to comment it for the couple of next weeks. There are a lot of professionals there on the site. First, we need to clean the area to make it safe.
There will be a lot of testing and analysis done. After that, we can just state properly what is the scope and hence what time is needed to do all the repair works.
What is the worst-case scenario, assuming that you need to rebuild all the pumps which are there?
The worst-case scenario is that we will procure new pumps and we will replace the burned pump, the damaged pumps with the new ones. For me, this is the worst-case scenario.
Yeah. It takes how long?
Look, I don't know. Firstly, we really have to see what is the scope of work to be done.
Yeah, but I'm just wondering whether this is the equipment which you can just buy from the shelf or we need to wait, I don't know, a year, two or three in order to have it installed.
Let's get back to this question once we see clearly what is the scope of work to be done.
Okay. Thank you.
Please understand me that I don't want to say anything because then it will be taken for granted. I would like to avoid to be very specific in this area. Thank you very much for your question.
As far as the second question concerns, so about the consumer services and the non-fuel performance. What I meant about the maturity or became a mature business, it means that the previously experienced double-digit growth pace can come down to, I mean, on a normalized level. It's much more closer, by the way, to the regional retail growth pace, but also the underlying business operation grew significantly over the past several years. That's just the relative growth pace, what I reflect on. On the other hand, on absolute terms, you can see that quarterly, actually, the sales increases roughly $30 million, and that can come down to $10 million margin contribution on quarterly basis. Still, the business is growing. I still see a natural kind of growth direction. It will not stop. It will continue its pace or its direction.
The other thing what I meant about the additional sales point or opening up additional selling opportunities, that naturally and historically, the fuel retail destination or locations and also the customer base whom we have, those are rather those customers who have a car and who is driving. Actually, that's what we would like to broaden up towards that customer base who is using the public transports. That's why actually we started up. By the way, that was a pilot, I mean, several pilots during the past several years in different formats, in different locations to test our Fresh Corner convenience store operation model. Actually, all those pilots now come down to an operating model and that we fit into a kiosk type of operation in several railway stations, several high traffic areas.
Actually, organically, we would like to grow towards that direction to offer hot dogs, coffee, soft drinks, salty snacks, a very limited number of SKUs in a very limited number of square meters with a very limited number of FTEs who are working on the location in order to utilize this organic growth opportunity to attract more and new customers into our non-fuel sales business or operational business. That is what I see, that actually there is a space for that. Really, our hot dog, coffee, our sortiment, our narrowed gastro sortiment, and also our loyalty program is a very, very good baseline or pillars for this kind of growth opportunity. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Oleg, please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. Thank you for the presentation and for the opportunity to ask questions. I have several, and actually all of them are kind of a follow-up on an earlier question regarding the oil supply to your refineries in Slovakia and Hungary. Firstly, the US sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil will come into effect on the 21st of November. I understand that the PM, Orbán, is seeking some exceptions from the US administration, but assuming that there is no exception granted to Hungary and Slovakia to continue importing Russian crude, does it mean that MOL will not be able to import any Russian crude as of November 22nd? If yes, then how is the company going to secure the oil supply to refineries?
Secondly, you mentioned that to prepare the group for a potential switch to non-Russian seaborne crude, a CapEx of circa $500 million would be required. Firstly, would you still see this level of investment necessary? Secondly, would the intensified rhetoric of both the EU and US administration regarding the need to completely cut off Russian supply, would this accelerate the speed of spending, the $500 million mentioned earlier? In other words, could we see a step up in CapEx spending next year as a result of that? Thirdly, there have been multiple articles commenting on the ability of the group to fully switch to seaborne crude oil imports via the Adria pipeline. Could you please maybe provide some light on how viable is the Adria pipeline as an alternative route of supply?
Because on one hand, we read here and there that MOL and Hungarian authorities are reportedly claiming high costs and technical issues with the supply via Adria pipeline. On the other hand, the Croatian authorities and JANAF specifically are negating those concerns. Help us understand what the problem is regarding this potential route of supply. That would be my questions, and then I'll get back in line to ask a few more. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Let me go one by one. Regarding the US sanctions and the effect, first, we do not want to, or I do not want to comment on any of our partners. With the sanctions not turning effective for a few more weeks, as you mentioned, the negotiations are still ongoing on diplomatic level. I believe you are very well informed about it from the media. I believe it would be premature to specify any action. Whatever will be the outcome, MOL will definitely continue to comply with all applicable sanctions. As I mentioned at answering the first question, we do not expect any disruption in our operation because of the US sanctions. We believe that we can supply our refineries via the Druzhba pipeline.
Regarding the second set of the question or the second set of the challenges, these are the diversification and how we do proceed. Yes, we informed all the stakeholders that we need this $500 million CapEx, and we want to invest it to be fully able to decouple from the Russian crude. We are investing in blending facilities, refinery facilities, and in logistics. We tested several crudes, so we know what would be the optimal crude basket once there is no Urals supply there. These are not just five engineers, but dozens of engineers who are working on this. I think that there is no room to accelerate the works further. We are very much aware of the threat that the operating crude oil infrastructure can be, the operation of this infrastructure can be interrupted every moment.
Of course, we are doing our best then to switch to the alternatives. This comes to the third question, that whether JANAF is able to deliver us the required quantities in the first place, and then what is the commercial side of it. Let me comment, as I am sitting in the board of Slovnaft. Yesterday, just yesterday, we put to the media that there was an agreement and schedule that 58,000 of Arab Light crude will be delivered to Slovnaft. JANAF, who is the operator of the Croatian pipeline system, failed. We were to receive yesterday 58,000 tons of crude, which was not delivered. What we see is that even the first technical challenge results in a delay of weeks. We missed the transparency. We still do not know the condition and capabilities of the pipeline.
What we learned is that JANAF has started the assessment of the Croatian pipeline section, but has not shared the findings. We are not aware of these works to be done there. We do not see the maintenance plan. This is the technical part of the question. Another, which is the factual truth, is that there were several tests, and several of them failed. To put, this is the commercial side, that the terms which are proposed by JANAF are very much beyond the market fairness. Of course, we are trying to solve all these issues on the technical level. Engineers speak to engineers. We are trying to fix those issues on the business level. As I said, we missed the transparency. We made several public statements because this is really critical.
On the east side, there is a huge risk that the pipe is interrupted. On the other alternative side, we see that there are a lot of concerns.
Understood. Thank you very much for these comments. Maybe just one clarification regarding my first question. From the legal point of view, and in the worst-case scenario, if there are no exceptions granted by the U.S. administration to Hungary, would MOL, legally speaking, be obliged to comply with the U.S. sanctions, or the exceptions granted by the EU to both countries would prevail? Just to understand these legal specifics. Thank you.
Yeah. I'm not a legal expert, but what I can read is that the US administration sanctioned particular companies. We are not sanctioned to be supplied by Russian crude, to deliver Russian crude.
I think, Oleg, Gabriel is not a legal expert, but definitely U.S. sanction regime and the EU sanction regime are parallel to each other. Regarding any hypothetical cases or future developments which are a result of diplomatic efforts, all are involved, and we are not directly affected by the U.S. sanctions. I think we made it clear, and we fully comply with all the applicable sanction regimes. I think it would be very much a speculative discussion than proper analysis. The regimes are parallel. This is a fact. The direct effects and secondary effects are also stipulated several times. What-if type of questions we are not ready to answer.
Thank you. Understood.
Thank you. Tamás, please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you very much. Good morning. Two questions, basically two follow-ups on this fire incident in the Danube refinery. First of all, it was not clear to me, but have you shut down the entire refinery when this fire bursted out? Because from the news, what I understood is that basically AV1 and AV2 were also off for almost a week. After that, you restarted both units. That would be my first question. My second question is, how would this fire change your export strategy? Would you touch the Hungarian strategic reserves in order to meet the Hungarian needs, or do you not plan to do this at the moment? How would it change your export, especially towards Ukraine and Serbia? Thank you.
Gabriel, please go ahead with the answer.
Yes. Thank you. As it was a really major fire, a major accident, the first thing what the firefighters do in this occasion is they do not fight the fire, but they rather control the fire. In the first step, we have to cut back the supply of the energy to this fire, so all the potential hydrocarbons flows towards the unit. Because of it and because of the emergency protocol, you are right, the majority of the refinery was shut down. As it was mentioned today, the refinery successfully restarted, so all the distillation and all the other units are operating as usual. Excuse me, Tamás, what was the second part of your question?
Yeah. Basically, the second part was, how will your export strategy change?
Yes. Right.
Will you touch the strategic reserves in Hungary?
Yeah. Definitely, we have to reschedule our supply to our domestic countries, supply of the fuels to our domestic countries and abroad. In the first place, the domestic countries are secured, so supply is fully secured. There should not be any worries there. We have to reschedule the exports to other markets. To the extent we can do, we maintain our position. As it was mentioned, we are getting the products also from third parties. We increase the trading activity, and we try to supply in the first place our own network of service stations and then our partners.
Do you plan to require to touch the Hungarian strategic fuel reserves in order to supply well the market, I mean, the Hungarian market?
So far, we did not do this. Once the situation stays as it is, we will operate as today.
Okay. Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ildar, please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you so much. Can I ask you about Kurdistan? What is next in terms of other phases of growth there? I have seen reports that the Chemchimal reserves could be used to develop, and that gas could be used to pump it to federal rock using the old oil pipeline. Is that feasible? Is that something that's being discussed at all or not? Thank you.
Yes. The Chemchimal is the other pearl reserve, which is to be developed. Currently, the Cormor is the sole production supply of largely gas, but also condensate and LPG as well. The Chemchimal is going to be tested probably in the next two years with a trial production facility. In the midterm, it is going to be also serious and significant gas suppliers, largely gas, maybe oil as well, that we do not know yet. It can be also potentially going into the direction of South Iraq, yes.
Thank you.
Thank you. Matei Rudas, please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks. Question regarding the Schwechat-Bratislava pipeline that was under planning for more than 20 years, and now there is no word about it. I know at the beginning, it was about to use the Druzhba pipeline to reach Schwechat. Nowadays, as you are talking about closing the Druzhba pipeline and having problems with JANAF, why do not you talk about this 62 km long pipeline that should be built, in my opinion, and would solve your problems and getting oil from the west, from the Trieste-Venice pipeline?
Gabriel, please go ahead.
Yes. As far as I know, the project was canceled several years ago. The partners were Transpetrol, so the Slovak crude oil pipeline operator, and OMV. Yeah. The project is fully off the table. It is canceled. There were several issues there, I learned, that first was the crossing of the Danube, which was heavily fought by the environmentalists. Also, on the Austrian side, the pipeline route was set in the environmentally protected area there. Probably there were more, but as I mentioned, we were not part of this consortium. The project is canceled. Thank you.
Okay. With that, thank you for your participation on today's call. Please reach out to Investor Relations if you have anything to follow up with. Thank you very much, and goodbye.
Thank you. Bye.