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Ukrainian traders have already bought all free gasoline from Lithuania’s Orlen Lietuva, the only refinery in the Baltics, and have contracted gasoline for sea delivery. But petrol shortage loom and drivers can expect price rises at the pumps.
UNIAN reports that Russia’s Rosneft and Surgutneftegas are refusing to supply oil to Belarus’ second largest refinery Naftan because of the looming US sanctions that hit Naftan this week. “Accordingly, our northern neighbours decided to screw on the tap with fuel for Ukraine in order to meet, first of all, the needs of their country.”
Russia has been very cautious about getting dragged into the ballooning row between Belarus and the west. While Moscow blocked the entry of a few flights to Russia from the EU that refused to fly over Belarusian airspace, it was careful to blame the decision on “technical routing problems” and later in the week allowed those flights to land in Russia.
Likewise, with the sanctions on Belarusian oil, as Russia remains a major oil supplier and exports to the US have doubled in the last year, to the point where they now exceed the exports to the US by Saudi Arabia, Russian oil producers are being very careful not to threaten their business with the US by dealing with Minsk.
That leaves Ukraine in the lurch as it is unable to trade directly with Russian producers of petroleum products due to its own self-imposed sanctions on Russian products and services.
Power outage
There is a similar story playing out in the power sector. Ukraine has banned the import of electricity from Belarus and Russia for four months, until October 1 in sympathy with the EU crackdown on Belarus.
“We remember our experience last winter,” Valeriy Tarasiuk, chairman of the National Energy and Utilities Regulatory Commission of Ukraine said last week.
While Ukraine intends to itself off from the Soviet-era regional power grid and hook itself up to the EU grid instead, it remains dependent on Belarus for power.
The Russia sanctions have also cut Ukraine off from supplies of coal needed to run its power stations and reserves of coal ran dangerous low, to below the mandatory minimum levels, in the winter after an unusually cold winter saw the demand for power and heating soar.
Ukraine has been importing coal from Russia surreptitiously, smuggling it through Belarus, but now the relations with Minsk have soured this source of fuel is also likely to dry up.
As a result of the coal shortage Ukraine was forced to import power from Belarus in record amounts, despite at the same time calling loudly for power grid connections to the Belarus grid to be cut.
The ban on imports of power from Belarus until October, when the winter
17 UKRAINE Country Report XXXX 2018 www.intellinews.com