On February 21, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka was on a call with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. The details of the conversation were revealed during Lukashenka’s meeting with Igor Orlov, Governor of Russia’s Arkhangelsk region.
“The President of Russia called me (you know that we sometimes have disputes over specific issues). He made an offer, including on oil supplies to Belarus, and asked us to think of it. Of course, we are now trying to сheck up on the offer, it was unexpected,” the Belarusian leader said.
According to him, Vladimir Putin proposed to calculate how much Belarus might lose on Russian oil and gas maneuver in 2020.
“We received customs duties in the amount of $1bn last year, and imagine that this year we will get only $700 mln as the duty is constantly reducing. Putin said they would pay back $300 mln, including in the form of bonuses to companies,” Lukashenka stressed.
According to him, Russia is ready to help us keep a financial level of the previous year in the oil industry.
“We will now calculate all that. But these calculations make virtually no sense. There are no other options from Russia. They asked us to trade oil at global prices. But companies did not agree. They also asked to add $12 of bonuses to the global price. You see, they say that we have marginal markets – of Europe, Ukraine, the Belarusian market,” state-run news agency BelTA quotes Alyaksandr Lukashenka.
On January 1, Russia stopped supplying oil to the refineries of Belarus due to the fact that Moscow and Minsk had not signed new contracts. Belarusian refineries continued to operate, but the production capacity utilization was reduced to a minimum technological level. Due to the lack of oil supplies from Russia, Belarus temporarily suspended exports of oil products.
Although Belarus is received oil from the companies of oligarch Mikhail Gutseriyev, who is friends with Alyaksandr Lukashenka, there are still no agreements with the main Russian supplier companies (Rosneft, Surgutneftegaz, Gazpromneft). As a result, only 500 thousand tons of Russian oil were delivered to Belarus in January – one quarter of what was planned. The country’s refineries are short of raw materials. Belarus has even started taking technological oil from the Druzhba pipeline.
On February 7, Alyaksandr Lukashenka met with Vladimir Putin in Sochi. Following the talks, Deputy Head of Presidential Administration of Russia Dmitry Kozak said that Moscow would facilitate commercial agreements between consumers in Belarus and Russian oil companies, but would not regulate prices administratively.
Earlier, Alyaksandr Lukashenka instructed his staff to study the possibility of oil supplies from other countries. On January 14, Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus Dzmitry Krutoy said that the Belarusian Oil Company (BOC) had sent out commercial proposals for the purchase of oil to Poland, the Baltic States, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.
