The ship Breiviken has arrived in Klaipeda port and delivered 80 thousand tons of Norwegian oil for the Belarusian oil refinery Naftan, Interfax reports.
“The vessel with 80 thousand tons of Norwegian oil for Belarus arrived at the port of Klaipeda yesterday. It’s currently being unloaded”.
Norwegian oil is expected to arrive at Naftan early next week.
At the Klaipeda port, the oil will be loaded in railway tanks through at the Klaipedos Nafta terminal, while it will be delivered to the Belarusian border by LG Cargo, a subsidiary of Lithuanian railway company Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai.
The exact cost of Norwegian oil is not yet known. But the delivery of oil from Klaipeda towards Navapolatsk refinery will cost Minsk much more than imports by pipelines – transshipment and transportation to the plant by rail will cost over $20 per ton.
Belarusian refineries have been operating at minimum load since January 1, 2020. At the beginning of the new year Russia stopped supplying oil to our country, as last year’s agreement ended and the new one was never signed. Lukashenka and Putin failed to agree on gas and oil prices for Belarus after the talks last year. Now oil from Russia is supplied to Belarusian refineries by the companies of the Safmar group controlled by the oligarch and friend of Alyaksandr Lukashenka Mikhail Gutseriyev. It is known that in January our country will receive about 750 thousand tons of oil, which will allow loading the refinery by only half of its capacity.
Against this background, the head of Belarus demanded that officials find an alternative to Russian oil. As a result, Belarus stopped exporting oil products to save resources for domestic needs.
Belarusian refineries are still operating at a minimum load, which allows only for the technological cycle of oil refining.
