Belarus has bought two tankers of Russian oil with shipment to Klaipeda. At a meeting with journalists, press secretary of Belneftekhim Alyaksandr Tsishchanka said that the total amount of oil purchased is 160 thousand tons.
“The oil is Russian, but it was bought from traders without any premium. Short delivery time was taken into account. The cost is a trade secret,” tut.by quotes a representative of Belneftekhim.
Belneftekhim bought this oil without a premium. The concern reports that “the Russian resources owner could have earned more from this supply even without a premium”.
Minsk was paying a premium of $10 to Russian oil companies to make their deliveries to our country more attractive. After the deterioration of oil quality and losses due to the Russian tax maneuver, Minsk is no longer willing to do so.
Tankers will arrive at the Lithuanian port on March 3-4 and March 13-15. After that, the Lithuanian railway plans to transport 100-150 tankers of oil per day to the Belarusian border, Interfax reports.
Minsk and Moscow have failed to agree on the terms of oil supply to Belarus in 2020. As a result, in January-February, only the companies of Mikhail Gutseriyev, who have friendly relations with Alyaksandr Lukashenka, supplied oil to Belarus. Over the past two months, domestic refineries have been operating at minimum load.
Vladimir Putin, after a meeting with the head of Belarus, promised to remove restrictions on access to the pipeline for companies interested in working with Belarus. Now the Belarusian government hopes for interest in cooperation with our country coming from the small and medium oil companies.
Diversification of oil supplies is one of Belneftekhim’s priorities for 2020. However, it has not yet been achieved: this year Belarus has purchased only 86 thousand tons of Norwegian oil.
