Lukashenko's threats against Russia will hit the budget of Belarus
If Alexander Lukashenko fulfills the threat voiced yesterday to stop the transit of Russian oil through Belarus under the pretext of repairing the Druzhba pipeline due to a tariff dispute with Moscow, this will deprive Minsk of approximately $585 million a year.
This forecast is published today by the Kommersant newspaper, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Export duties on 6 million tons of transit oil go instead of Russian duties to the Belarusian budget - at current oil prices this is approximately $585 million per year. If there is no transit, Minsk will not receive this money, as well as payments for transit itself. In addition, the Russian side may, as a retaliatory measure, limit the supply of duty-free oil to Belarus, for which Minsk has no alternative,” the publication says.
True, Minsk’s demarche will cause economic damage to Russia, since today alternative routes cannot provide the entire volume of Russian oil supplies to the West.
“Even if we assume that pipelines in the direction of the Russian ports of the Baltic and Black Seas will be filled to capacity, if oil transit through Belarus is stopped, the deficit of Transneft’s capacity in the western direction will be over 10 million tons per year... Export by rail will not be able to become significant alternative, since it can provide only small volumes and will cost much more... Refineries in Poland and eastern Germany, which currently receive raw materials through the Druzhba, can be supplied through the port of Gdansk, but the port and pipeline capacity in Poland will not be enough to maintain the current the level of utilization of these factories,” the publication claims.
The newspaper recalls that Belarus already resorted to stopping transit for a week in 2007 amid disagreements over the cost of gas.
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