An image of a gas flare at the Mozyr Oil Refinery in Belarus on Jan. 4, 2020. Russia recently resumed its oil deliveries to Belarus after a pricing dispute prompted Moscow to halt its supplies at the beginning of the year.
Despite the recent resumption of Russian oil deliveries, Belarus has remained committed to diversifying its crude imports, which will enable it to negotiate more favorable terms in a potential integration agreement with Moscow. On Jan. 1, Russia moved to cut off Belarus’s access to its crucial oil deliveries after the two failed to reach an oil pricing agreement. As deliveries through the Druzhba pipeline from Russia dried up, Belarus turned to alternative sources of crude imports in Norway and Azerbaijan to partially replace those suspended by Moscow. These imports helped Belarus keep its refineries operational, albeit at only half their capacity, during the first quarter of 2020. Tankers delivered over 2 million barrels of oil from Norway to Lithuania’s Klaipeda port, from where oil was transported by rail to Belarusian refineries.
