MINSK, 20 March (BelTA) – This month's third tanker carrying oil for Belarus has arrived in the Klaipeda port, BelTA learned from Aleksandr Tishchenko, Press Secretary of the Belarusian state petrochemical concern Belneftekhim.
The official said that the third tanker travelling via the northern route had arrived in Klaipeda. The Belarusian refinery OAO Naftan is already receiving oil brought by the second tanker. The third tanker delivered 80,000 tonnes of oil.
Yet another tanker is expected to deliver oil for Belarus to Klaipeda this month.
BelTA reported earlier that the Azerbaijani company SOCAR will ship about 250,000 tonnes of oil to Belarus in March. Two out of three tankers have already delivered crude oil to Odessa. Belneftekhim Chairman Andrei Rybakov was quoted as saying that SOCAR may ship up to 1 million tonnes of oil to Belarus in 2020.
Belarusian oil refineries are expected to get a total of about 1 million tonnes of oil from various sources in March. In January and February the oil refineries operated at 50% of their capacity and processed about 1.8 million tonnes of oil.
Major Russian oil companies stopped shipping oil to Belarus on 1 January due to the absence of an agreement on prices. First Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus Dmitry Krutoi was quoted as saying that Belarus believes it is economically inadvisable and pointless to pay the same amounts of premiums to Russian companies. On 11 March Prime Minister of Belarus Sergei Rumas said that Belarus had presented new oil acquisition proposals to Russia.
