BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS
DATE:
04/01/2010
Russia resumes oil supply to Belarus refineries
Reuters/Minsk
Russia said yesterday it had resumed supplies to refineries in Belarus, but tensions are still simmering in a dispute over oil deliveries between the world's biggest energy producer and its ex-Soviet neighbour.
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin said yesterday: "We yesterday started shipments to Belarussian refineries", Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.
After meeting Sechin, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he hoped to clinch a deal with Belarus over oil supplies sometime soon, Interfax added.
But Minsk earlier yesterday warned it may cut electricity supplies to Russia, racheting up tensions in the dispute between the two ex-Soviet countries, which broke out on New Year's Eve.
That has raised the spectre of another winter of supply disruptions for European Union customers such as Germany which buys 15% of its oil from Belarus's arm of the Druzhba pipeline.
Oil rose yesterday to $81 a barrel, its highest for more than two months, partly on the spat though oil was flowing normally to European Union customers via the Druzhba pipeline, which carries crude from Russian oilfields in Western Siberia.
In a sign tensions were rising, Belarus's state power company said the lack of a proper agreement governing electricity supplies meant it might have to be cut to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea.
"The Belarussian side will be forced to stop the unsanctioned commercial transit of electricity across the Belarussian grid which could threaten supplies to customers in Kaliningrad," a unit of Belenergo said in a statement.
A spokesman for Belenergo refused further comment.
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