Oil talks failed?

Another round of negotiations about oil shipments finished yesterday between Uladzimir Siamashka and Arkadiy Dvorkovich.

Judging from the short message from Belarusian embassy in Moscow, Belarusian and Russian Prime-Ministers couldn’t reach a consensus, TUT.by reports.

“Uladzimir Siamashka and Arkadiy Dvorkovich substantially looked at the state and prospects of further mutually beneficial trade and economic cooperation, including build-up of the Belarus-Russia cooperation in the fuel and energy realm. Agreements were reach as to continuation of regular contacts on mutual basis”, - the message reads.

Before it was reported that during the talks over the oil shipments to Belarus in the IV quarter of 2012 and in 2013 Moscow suggested that Minsk compensates the loss of the Russian budget cause by Belarusian “solvents” business, which is estimated as $1.5 billion. Russian and Belarusian experts doubt that Belarus will be able to pay $1.5 billion of compensation to the Russian budget. It is more likely that there will be talks of non-monetary solution of the issue.

At the end of the previous week the first round of the negotiations took place in Moscow with the participation of the first vice-Prime Minister of the Belarusian government Uladzimir Siamashka and deputy Minister of Economy Anatol Filonau. The prospects of energy resource shipments to Belarus were discussed also on 19 October at the meeting of Belarusian Prime-Minister Mikhail Miasnikovich and Russian Energy Minister Aliaksandr Novak in Minsk. Particularly, the issues of oil shipments to Belarus in the IV quarter were touched upon. Russia decreased the amounts of the “black gold” shipments to our country by 1.3 million tons.