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Poland Expects the Oil Back On within Hours
Polish Deputy Minister of the Economy Piotr Naimski says that supplies of Russian oil flowing through Belarus will be restored within hours. The Polish politician told journalists that he hopes that the incident is related only to temporary stoppages. The first time supplies were stopped was around 10:00 p.m. local time on January 7. The supplies were resumed and stopped again.
“Most likely,” Naimski suggested, “the problem is connected with the disagreement between Russia and Belarus over customs duties, but the situation once again shows us that the states of the former USSR, from our point of view, provide supplies very unreliably.”
Naimski added that the situation would not effect Poland's energy security. “The oil refineries have crude oil reserves to cover the next 80 days,” he said.
Belarus is insistently denying that Belneftekhim is responsible for the oil shutoff to Europe. The Belarusian Foreign Ministry has issued a statement claiming that pressure in the pipeline was reduced before the Belarusian section of the pipeline and that Minsk has no connection to the fact.
Transneft head Semen Vainshtok earlier accused Belarus of tapping Russian oil without authorization for the last two days.
www.kommersant.com
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Photo: Dmitry Lebedev