Oil in exchange for enterprises

The volume of the shipments of Russian oil will not be increased despite Belarus’ fighting for it.

Anonymous sources in Russian government report that Moscow will not increase the volume of oil shipments to Belarus in the second half of the year, despite Minsk’s strong aspiration for it.

Among the reasons for that experts name the refuse of the Belarusian stakeholders to fulfill long-standing agreements on integration projects and also the continuation of the practice of grey re-export schemes with oil, for which fees are no paid to the Russian budget, Deutsche Welle reports.

“There is no “oil war”, there is a dialogue on working issues, - the head of the Economy deprtment on Moscow Institute for Energy and Finance Sergeu Agibalov. – Belarus wants to receive more oil, and Russia does not rush into this and may only provide the basic volume of 21.5 million tons before the end of the  year, which used to be annually processed at Belarusian refineries”.

Moscow demands the fulfillment of promises and wants to push Belarus into implementing the decision, agreed upon earlier, Sergeu Agibalov supposes. He adds that the requests from the Belarusian side of increasing the volume of oil supplies may be satisfied, but not unilaterally.

A senior researcher of the Russian Institute of Economy in Transition Sergei Zhavoronkov does not rule out that grey operations with re-export of Russian oil and oil products to Europe are one of the reasons why Moscow may refuse Minsk the requested for 2013 volume of oil. “Different schemes exist, under the pressure of the power vertical this bookkeeping is being disguised in different Belarusian agencies, so it is fairly hard to follow it”, - the expert point out.

According to him, the disruption of the MAP and KamAZ merger deal and the emotional commentary of the Belarus’ president on that was also a serious ground for the disagreements between the parties. (On 19 April Lukashenka called the MAP - KamAZ merger a “criminal act”).