BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

23/01/2007

Belarus, Russia: A "civilized" energy accord

Belarus Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky (left) and his Russian counterpart, Mikhail Fradkov (right) during a break in their negotiations in Moscow to resolve the oil dispute

Belarus has welcomed a new oil trading agreement between it and Russia as a ?civilized? way to resolve a row that had threatened energy supplies to Europe.

Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Kobykov said the deal was "balanced" and a "civilized way to resolve the dispute", which disrupted oil supplies to the European Union earlier this month.

"The Belarus budget will not suffer any losses as a result of the approval of the new conditions for the purchase of Russian oil", he told a TV interviewer.

The agreement, which straddles several aspects of the countries' complex oil trading arrangements, will see Minsk pay a tax of 53 dollars (41 euros) per ton of oil that it imports from Russia.

Belarus will also pay Russia a tariff on exports of oil products made in Belarussian refineries using Russian oil.

The import tax was well below the 180 dollars originally demanded by Russia after Belarus attempted to impose a 45-dollar-per-ton tax on oil crossing its territory from Russia to Europe.

European jitters over the reliability of Russian energy supplies were exacerbated when the row led to the closure of the Druzhba ("Friendship") pipeline, the main channel for Russian oil flowing to the EU.

Source:

http://www.mmorning.com/ArticleC.asp?Article=4380&CategoryID=7