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The Belarusian Ministry of Transport and Communications announced last week that it is ready to sign such an agreement with the Russian Ministry of Transport. It was to be signed on February 15 by Russia’s Transport Minister Vitaly Savelev and Belarusian Communications and Transport Minister Alexei Abramenko, but the signing was postponed without a new deadline.
“The draft agreement foresees that Belarusian companies will transship more than 9.8 million tons of cargo in Russian Baltic Sea ports in 2021-2023. Tons of cargo. These include cargoes such as fuel oil, gasoline and oil. The agreement provides for the signing of contracts on a take or pay basis. If the sender sends less cargo to the ports than agreed upon, the terminal operators will have to pay for cargo handling services of all agreed volumes, “announced the Ministry of Transport of Russia.
The agreement provides for the signing of contracts on the basis of take or pay.
Meanwhile, Minsk fears that the agreement will not be signed anyway and links the threat of its collapse with the bargaining position of cargo terminal operators in Russian ports.
“The signing of the agreement is threatened by the failure of Russian companies that try to evade its batch format. The problem is that without the signing of this agreement and the agreements with the operators together, all the agreements reached in this area will become forms of unilateral commitments by Belarus, ”said a source close to the Belarusian negotiators.
“So far, the agreements with the Russian maritime terminal operators and the railway operator have not been finalized, and must be signed together with this intergovernmental agreement,” explained Anna Kurilenok, spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Transport.
According to her, Belarus intends to sign agreements with operators of oil products terminals in the ports of St. Petersburg and Ust Luga.
The expected period of validity of these documents is until the end of 2023, which provides for the possibility of their automatic renewal.
In August last year, Lukashenko threatened retaliatory sanctions against Lithuania and Poland, who then intended to take action against the authoritarian leader on suspicion of electoral fraud and police violence against protesters.
According to A. Lukashenko, Belarus will refuse to use Lithuanian ports for the export of its products; potassium fertilizers and petroleum products are mainly exported through them.
In early October, A. Lukashenko threatened to “participate” in the cargo flows from Lithuania and Latvia. He also said that Belarus and Russia are negotiating the reorientation of Belarusian export cargo (petroleum products, potash fertilizers and other goods) from Baltic ports to Russian ports on the coast of the Gulf of Finland.
Earlier this year, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak announced that exports of Belarusian oil products through Russian ports could start in 2021.
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