Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed to force Belarusian refineries to use Russian infrastructure to transport petroleum products.
“This needs to be discussed in a broader format. After all, the Belarusian oil refineries process our oil, there is no other oil there, and this is unlikely to change, so it should be packaged — receiving our oil from the relevant issues of our infrastructure,” Putin said at a meeting on the development of transport infrastructure.
According to “Interfax”, at the meeting, the head of “Russian Railways” Oleg Belozyorov reported to Putin that the Belarusian refineries refuse the services of the Russian Railways services to the benefit of the Baltic infrastructure, despite the discount in the Russian Federation.
“We provided a 50% loading discount for transportation from Belarusian enterprises, but the Belarusian plants have not used either the Ust-Luga, or St. Petersburg, but went to the Baltic republics. We are in talks, they say that they have long-term contracts concluded on this issue, but we are trying to construct a dialogue with them,” said Belozyorov.
Moscow has addressed the use of the Russian infrastructure by Belarusians before. Earlier, experts noted that the Baltic oil transportation route is more advantageous for Belarus from the economic point of view, even in view of the discount offered by Russia for using its logistics corridors.
