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Germany depends on Russia for a couple of third of its oil, and Robert Habeck, the economic system minister and vice chancellor, has spent weeks making ready for an embargo, jetting from the United Arab Emirates to Washington to Warsaw to line up various sources of crude.

“The last third is the problem,” Mr. Habeck mentioned in a video geared toward explaining the state of affairs to Germans. And most of that Russian oil comes by means of the refinery in Schwedt.

The refinery is a looming image of how deeply Germany’s oil and fuel wants are tied to its large vitality exporter to the east. The PCK refinery — the identify is a nod to its East German roots because the state-owned “Petrolchemisches Kombinat,” or Petrochemical Combine — is owned by Rosneft, the Russian state-owned oil company. It is linked to the Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline, one of many world’s longest, bringing oil from Siberian wells to Western Europe.

And it stays a vital a part of Germany’s vitality wants, producing fuels for Berlin — Germany’s largest metropolis — and close by areas, together with components of Poland. Sourcing sufficient oil to exchange the 12 million tons of crude processed every year in Schwedt — by way of German and Polish ports to the north — is just one piece of the puzzle, as a result of Rosneft has advised German officers it has no real interest in working the refinery utilizing non-Russian oil.

To deal with that downside, Germany’s Parliament authorized a legislation final week that might make it simpler for the federal government to grab important infrastructure below overseas possession to stop a nationwide emergency. Should the oil embargo undergo, German officers mentioned the brand new legislation would enable Berlin to make sure an sufficient provide of oil merchandise till one other company might be discovered to accumulate Rosneft’s stake.

Shell, Europe’s largest vitality company, which holds a 37.5 p.c stake in PCK, mentioned lately that it could assist the refinery, “even at the cost of economic losses in order to maintain supplies to the region.” Last year, Shell sought to promote its stake within the refinery and Rosneft moved to accumulate it, however Germany’s economic system ministry, which weighs political and strategic facets of overseas investments, has but to approve it.

Another vitality agency, Alcmene, a part of the privately owned British vitality holding company Liwathon Group, has expressed curiosity in investing in Schwedt. “We would be able to deliver security of supply and full utilization of the PCK refinery through German ports” with out authorities subsidies, Alcmene mentioned in an emailed assertion.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz has made clear that he was conscious of considerations surrounding the refinery, and regarded guaranteeing its future a precedence.

“We are looking very closely at how this can actually work out,” he advised a current meeting of his social gathering within the state of Brandenburg. “We’re also going to make sure that employees aren’t left on their own.”

Fears that layoffs might be across the nook drew a whole lot of employees, many dressed within the PCK’s official fluorescent orange and forest inexperienced colours, to the company canteen earlier this month for a town-hall meeting with Mr. Habeck.

Like different areas of the previous East Germany, Schwedt skilled widespread job losses after the collapse of communism. Memories of 25 p.c unemployment nonetheless hang-out the area.

In addition, the refinery is not only a supply of oil and revenue, additionally it is the core of town’s id. Flattened by the Soviet Union on the finish of World War II, the arrival of the oil pipeline — its identify, Druzhba, means friendship in Russian — and refinery within the late Nineteen Sixties drew hundreds of employees and their households, lured by safe jobs. PCK’s slogan is: “We move Berlin and Brandenburg!”

Today, roughly a tenth of town’s 30,000 inhabitants maintain safe union jobs on the refinery and supporting industries. Many employees used the meeting with Mr. Habeck to question the federal government’s strategy.

“Why should we take a business partner that for decades has been reliable and always delivered, and slap them with an embargo?” mentioned one man who recognized himself as having labored on the refinery for 27 years.

“My wish would actually be to keep the Druzhba pipeline out of the embargo entirely,” mentioned one other worker, who recognized herself because the mom of three younger youngsters. “There is no alternative that is profitable.”

Reporters have been requested to not establish the workers who spoke throughout the occasion, to guard their privateness.

Mr. Habeck tried to guarantee the gang that the refinery would preserve working. “If everything functions as it would on paper,” crude from Norway or the Middle East might be shipped from the ports of Rostock and Gdansk, Poland, each linked to the refinery by pipelines.

At the identical time, he acknowledged, there have been a number of factors within the course of the place it might hit a snag.

The PCK facility, like different refineries, is engineered to course of the actual sort of crude oil arriving from Russia. Crude coming in from different international locations must be combined with oil held in reserve tanks on Germany’s northwestern coast to create an acceptable mix.

Getting that reserve oil to the pipeline in Rostock would require a seven-day journey by sea, as a result of no pipelines cross the previous boundary that divided East and West Germany, and the nation’s important railway cargo operator has virtually no oil vehicles.

Another potential complication: The Polish authorities is refusing to work with Russian entities, and it has advised German officers that so long as Rosneft holds an curiosity within the refinery, no oil shall be arriving from Gdansk.

“We can’t be completely sure about anything that we are doing,” Mr. Habeck advised the refinery workers. “But at least it has been thoroughly discussed and thought through.”

Ultimately, Mr. Habeck and native officers wish to see the refinery abandon fossil fuels and deal with processing renewable vitality. In current years, PCK has invested in creating artificial gas with a deal with hydrogen. Verbio, a company producing ethanol from native sources, has been working on the positioning of the refinery, feeding bioenergy into town’s heating system.

Officials in Berlin pressured the financial attraction of the encircling area, pointing to the newly accomplished Tesla meeting plant and Intel’s announcement of a $19 billion chip-making facility. Both corporations have been drawn by an abundance of renewable vitality, mentioned Carsten Schneider, Chancellor Scholz’s liaison for japanese Germany, who additionally spoke to the Schwedt residents.

“I assured them that the German government would not just abandon them, but would make an effort, both for a short-term solution of securing oil from somewhere else and for the long-term restructuring toward production of regenerative energy,” he mentioned.

The metropolis’s mayor, Annekathrin Hoppe, mentioned she wish to arrange a campus for start-ups, incubators and different vitality innovators close to the refinery to advertise the transition to inexperienced vitality manufacturing. But, she mentioned, that might require “sums in the millions or billions.”

Despite all the eye that politicians from Berlin have showered on her metropolis, she mentioned she had but to see a timeline or any concrete assurances that folks would have the ability to preserve their jobs, or any pledges of monetary help.

“It was a good start,” she mentioned of the previous weeks’ flurry of visits. “But it was only a start.”