Poland And Azerbaijan Left Lukashenka Without Oil

The alternative supply from these countries is not possible.

The infrastructure of the Druzhba pipeline will not allow the Polish operator to transport oil to Belarus maintaining supplies to its own refineries, the press service of the Polish operator Druzhba, the PERN company, told RIA Novosti.

- The current technical infrastructure of the Druzhba pipeline makes it impossible to transfer oil from the base in Adamava in the eastern direction, maintaining the continuity of supplies to current PERN customers with which there are valid contracts for transporting oil, - the press service said.

Answering the question whether there are any negotiations with Belarus on oil supplies at all, the press service replied that "the negotiations that PERN conducts with other operators of transport pipelines arise from current cooperation, and the subject of these conversations is a commercial secret".

On January 14, First Deputy Prime Minister Dzmitry Krutoi said that Belarus was considering options for "alternative oil supplies".

- We have sent relevant commercial proposals to all countries. All the commercial services of our plants and the Belarusian Oil Company are holding negotiations almost on a daily basis, - Krutoi stated on STV air following the meeting of Lukashenka with the leadership of the Council of Ministers.

Azerbaijani oil company SOCAR reports that it has received a request from the Belarusian side, but "we are not talking about specific supplies yet". This was stated by deputy head of the Department of Public Relations and Event Management of SOCAR Ibrahim Ahmedov to APA-Economics.

For many years, Belarus has been buying only Russian oil. Since January 1, 2020, Russian oil companies have stopped supplying oil to Belarus because of disagreements on the price of raw materials. Minsk insists on abolishing the premium to the price of duty-free oil supplies, motivating it by increasing the price of raw materials in connection with the implementation of tax maneuver in the Russian oil sector. According to Belnautakhim, at present the price of oil supplies from Russia is 83% of the world oil price. The premium amount is $10 per ton. Dzmitry Krutoi said that Belarus "will not pay bonuses to Russian oil producers in the previous amount.