Polish oil company Orlen, which controls the key Czech refinery in Litvinov, will receive fuel from the Czech state reserves following the shuttering of the refinery after an unexploded British World War II bomb was discovered on the site.

“Releasing of the emergency reserves will cover the drop in the refinery production approximately for fourteen days,” Pavel Svagr, head of the State Material Reserves Administration (SSHR) was quoted as saying by Czech Television (CT).

“The market alone cannot solve the drop in supplies in such a short time. By providing the loan, the supplies of motor fuels in Czechia remain stable and drivers won’t notice anything. There is no reason for speculative growth of prices of motor fuels,” Svagr added.

The Czech government had to approve the loan of the fuel and CT noted it should amount to 135,000 cubic metres, worth CZK1.9bn (€76mn).  

CT noted that the Czech state has reserves for about 90 days of use. SSHR is designed to respond to 24 types of crisis situations. Orlen should return the fuel by the year’s end and is expected to be prohibited from exporting the fuel, though the precise conditions of the loan are still subject to negotiations between Orlen and the Czech state.

Litvinov has an exemption from sanctions on Russia that allows it to import Russian oil. Earlier this month, Orlen's CEO Ireneusz Fafara told Polish press agency PAP that Orlen is ready to end Russian oil imports completely pending the completion of the enhancing of the oil pipeline connection from Germany to Czechia. “Orlen Group is ready to completely cut itself off from Russian crude oil which is currently processed only at the refinery in Litvinov in the Czech Republic,” Fafara was quoted as saying. 

The WWII bomb found in the Litvinov plant weighs 250 kilogrammes and includes 100 kilogrammes of explosives. It is expected to be cleared by a supervised explosion this Friday, 30 August, weather permitting.

“Today it is clear it [the supervised explosion] will be on Friday afternoon at the earliest, but we are still observing the meteorological conditions,” police spokesperson Irena Pilarova was quoted as saying by CT.

Pyrotechnicians stated that the bomb was supposed to explode hours after landing. The whole area is now secured and was searched for further explosives.

Shortly before the eruption of WWII in Europe, today’s Czechia was forcibly included in the Nazi Third Reich half a year after it was made to cede border territories to Hitler’s Germany following the Munich Pact in 1938, it what is regarded as a national humiliation. The country’s industry was then used by Nazis for their war effort and the industrial sites were heavily bombed by Allied air forces after they defeated the Nazi Luftwaffe and took control of the skies over Europe.