Belarusian oil refineries to supply enough gasoline to home market, Russia in 2015

The output capacity of Belarusian oil refineries (Mozyr Oil Refinery and Naftan) will allow satisfying the domestic demand for gasoline and supplying 1.8 million tonnes of gasoline to Russia in 2015, the press service of the Belarusian state petrochemical concern Belneftekhim told BelTA.

The source assured that the technological level and the output capacity of Belarusian oil refineries allow providing Belarus’ home market with quality oil products compliant with ecological standards on par with at least Euro 5 (K5) in addition to supplying up to 1.8 million tonnes of commercial automobile gasoline to Russia in 2015.

According to the press service, in January-September 2014 Russia bought over 1.2 million tonnes of Belarusian oil products, with over 1.4 million tonnes sold in 2013.

BelTA reported earlier that on 21 October the session of the Council of Ministers of the Union State of Belarus and Russia passed the indicative balances of fuel and energy resources for 2015. In line with the documents in 2015 Belarus will receive 23 million tonnes of oil, including 22 million tonnes via pipelines. In return Belarus will have to supply Russia with the agreed amount of oil products.

The Russian government has approved a draft protocol that stipulates the procedure for transferring export duties on Belarusian oil products. In particular, the document specifies that the fulfillment of the schedule for supplying automobile gasoline from Belarus to Russia will be examined on a quarterly basis. Belarus is expected to supply 1.8 million tonnes of automobile gasoline to Russia in 2015. If Belarus fails to deliver more than 10% of the volume specified by the schedule for a given quarter, next quarter Russia will be able to reduce oil deliveries via pipelines.

On the whole, the draft protocol specifies that from 1 January 2015 through 31 December 2015 export customs duties on oil products, which are exported from Belarus, will be transferred to Belarus’ budget in U.S. dollars in full.