Transneft plans to pump 1.6 million metric tons of oil to Belarus in February, a spokesman for Russia's state-run oil pipeline monopoly said Tuesday.
Russian oil companies halted oil deliveries to Belarus on January 1 pending a new price agreement but resumed them on January 25. Reports earlier in the day said Russian and Belarusian companies had finally agreed on the oil price.
"Deliveries will equal 800,000 tons for the Mozyr and the Novopolotsk oil refineries. We are trying to make up for the under-delivered January volumes," spokesman Igor Dyomin said.
He added that the original plan stipulated 1.5 million tons for January, but just 208,000 tons were supplied to the Mozyr refinery and 148,000 tons to the Novopolotsk refinery.
In 2010, Russia slapped duties on crude oil exports to Belarus to prevent Minsk from cashing in on re-exporting Russian oil derivatives to the EU.
Under a Russian-Belarusian common economic space agreement signed in early December 2010, Russia agreed to lift the tariffs from January 1 on condition that Minsk transfers to Russia duties from exports of oil products.
In January, the Russian and Belarusian prime ministers, Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Myasnikovich, agreed that Belarus would receive $4.1 billion worth of subsidies from Russia in the form of duty-free oil supplies in 2011.
MOSCOW, February 1 (RIA Novosti)
