$550K debt. Will Lukashenka-Putin meeting end gas and oil conflict?


A meeting of Alyaksandr Lukashenka and Vladimir Putin is scheduled for the first half of February, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says.

Before the meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Union State in Moscow, the two leaders are expected to discuss the issues of cooperation in the field of energy.

“Moscow and Minsk has not still agreed upon the formation of gas prices; the issue of Belarus’s paying its debt for the gas supplied has not been resolved either,” the Russian newspaper ‘Izvestia’ reports.

The exact date of the meeting has not been settled yet. The Russian side offered to hold it on February 9, but Belarus has failed to confirm this date by the moment.

The oil and gas conflict between Russia and Belarus has been running on for a year. Two capitals failed to come to terms over payments for Russian gas delivered in 2016. Minsk was indignant at the fact that Russian consumers bought gas at subsidized prices. Belarus is seeking the same subsidies for domestic enterprises so that they could compete on the Russian market.

The conflict erupted as Belarus started to pay $73 per thousand cubic meters while the contract price for the Russian gas was $132.

In October, Belarus was late in paying the debt for gas. The government was to transfer to “Gazprom” $ 281 million. Later, it became known that Minsk had not transferred money for Russian gas, as it expected signing of ‘some’ agreements.

Against the backdrop of the gas dispute and a default on deliveries of petroleum products, Russia reduced the supply of oil to Belarusian refineries by 5.25 million tons, which crushed the export of Belarusian oil products. The ‘gas war’ has already cost Belarus 0.3% of GDP.

In response to the Russia’s measures, from October 11, Belarus wanted to raise tariffs for the transit of Russian oil through Belarusian territory by 50%. Later this resolution was canceled in exchange for the restoration of the full volume of oil supplies from Russia.

belsat.eu

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