MOSCOW, January 31. /TASS/. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Friday that the purchase of Norwegian oil by Belarus boils down to economic advantage.
"This is a matter of economic feasibility. If this oil [from Norway] is cheaper than Russian oil, of course, any country should act solely according to its own interests," he maintained.
In his opinion, this is "pure economics, and commercial advantage."
On January 23, the Norwegian tanker Breiviken shipped about 86,000 tonnes of oil that Belarus had bought in Norway to the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda. From there, the oil was transported by rail to an oil refinery in Novopolotsk for the customer. Bringing the entire volume to Belarus is estimated to take up to two weeks. The last time oil was transported to Belarus through Lithuania was in 2017.
The supplies of Russian oil to Belarusian refineries were stopped on January 1, 2020 because Moscow and Minsk had failed to come to an agreement on this year’s supplies. Later, deliveries were partially resumed by the SAFMAR Group.
President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus instructed his government to find alternatives to importing oil from Russia. The authorities in Minsk reported that they had sent proposals to the Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.