Russian-Belarusian Oil Row Continues
Thursday, January 14th, 2010
Belarus, a small post-Soviet state once hardly distinguishable from Russia and chronically misspelled in the Western press, has been making more and more headlines lately. And if the Russian-Belarusian military exercises with deployment of Russia’s most advanced S-400 air defense system weren’t enough, the 2010 Russian-Belarusian oil row is bound to make the West anxious.
Moscow and Minsk failed to close a new deal after Russian-Belarusian agreement on crude oil export tariffs expired on the New Year’s Eve. As the two states argued over pricing, Russia had briefly halted supplies to the Naftan and Mozyr refineries to show Minsk who the boss is.
Flows were restarted on Jan. 3. To pacify its customers in the EU, Russia promised that the export flow would continue with no further interruptions. Western Europe is slow to celebrate, however; it remembers that last January similar steps preceded a complete shutdown of gas flow through Ukraine. The dispute has already pushed oil prices up to $81 a barrel, their highest in nearly 15 months.
