Belarus paid off $726.2 mln debt to Gazprom.
Moscow and Minsk have fully resolved the oil and gas dispute, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said on Thursday.
“Belarus and Russia have signed four agreements, which fully resolve the issues in the oil and gas sector we’ve had over the past a year and a half related to Russian gas supplies to the Republic of Belarus and payment for those supplies,” he said.
According to Arkady Dvorkovich, the transfer of Belarusian gas debt allowed Russia to shift to a new stage of cooperation in the oil and gas sector. Gazprom will determine the final discount that will be applied to the contract price for natural gas for Belarus.
“Taking into account the discount the price will be under $130 per 1,000m3,” the top official believes.
The volume of Russian oil Belarus gets will start getting raised in April, Belarusian Deputy Prime Minister Uladzimir Syamashka after signing the package of documents on cooperation in oil and natural gas fields. In line with the signed documents Belarus will get a total of 24 million tonnes of oil per year. These are long-term arrangements that will last through 2024, Syamashka stressed.
As reported earlier, Belarusian president Alyaksandr Lukashenka signed the new Customs Code of the Eurasian Economic Union. After the recent meeting the leaders of Belarus and Russia claimed they had settled a long gas and oil conflict between the countries as well as ‘all the disputable issues in bilateral relations’. According to political scientist Andrey Suzdaltsau, Lukashenka ‘meekly agreed’ to all conditions set by Russia.
