Belarus won’t get access to Odessa-Brody pipeline

Ukraine won’t agree to the request of Belarus to fill the pipeline Odessa-Brody with Venezuelan oil.

A Kyiv-based expert on energy issues Mikhail Honchar said in an interview to BBC that the Ukrainian authorities won’t agree to exacerbate relations with Russia for the sake of oil transit via the pipeline to Belarus, Radio Svaboda informs.

“I have serious doubts about that. Unfortunately, that’s because in fact as far as we understand purchases of Venezuelan oil cause negative reaction of Russia, which views that as Belarus’ freeing itself from he leverage of dependence from the Russian side. And so, if Ukraine would help the Belarusian side in context, automatically it would meet with some problems from the Russian side. And the current regime in Ukraine, as it seems to me, would not be ready to dare to exacerbate relations with Russia. It seems to me that it was one of the reasons why the Belarusians are working so actively with Baltic ports now,” Mikhail Honchar said.

The expert recalled that the variant of oil deliveries for Belarus through the Ukrainian oil transportation system and the pipeline Odessa-Brody pipeline, was elaborated in 1995 on the order of the Belarusian side.

At the moment Odessa-Brody pipeline is working in the reverse direction and pumps Russian oil. Belarus hopes to increase the volume of deliveries from Venezuela by 2012 to 10 million tons and use the Ukrainian pipeline Odessa-Brody for that.