Belarus continues blackmailing Russian oil transit
The Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia and the Ministry of Antimonopoly Regulation and Trade of Belarus (MART) were unable today to agree on an increase in the tariff for oil transit through the Druzhba pipeline.
This was reported by the opposition Belarusian news agency BelaPAN with reference to the MART press service, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The Belarusian side previously proposed increasing the tariff by 16,6%, but the Russian Transneft believes that the new tariff is not confirmed by calculations using the current methodology.
On September 1, 2019, Belarus had already increased tariffs by 3,7% and explained this by the need to compensate for its losses from transporting oil contaminated with dichloroethane in April. The incident occurred due to the fault of Transneft, which admitted it.
A few days ago, Belarus introduced an additional environmental tax on oil transit in the amount of 50% of the profits of transit companies.
On the same day, the opposition Belarusian media published a leak allegedly from the presidential administration about an impending stop in the transit of Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline.
According to the current methodology, tariffs must be agreed upon by January 15. If this cannot be done, a decision must be made before February 1.
Editor-in-Chief of the Russian liberal radio station “Echo of Moscow” Alexey Venediktov that the issue of transit of Russian oil through Belarus was raised during the negotiations between Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin. The German Chancellor allegedly received assurances from the Russian President that the issue would be resolved.
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