Russia must pay hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation to Belarus for contaminated oil
(Baonghean.vn) - On May 11, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko affirmed that Moscow should not deny the damage caused by contaminated Russian oil going to Belarus through the Druzhba pipeline. According to Mr. Lukashenko, the damage is up to hundreds of millions of USD.
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| Russian President Vladimir Putin and Transneft Director Nikolay Tokarev. Photo: DPA |
Earlier in the day, President Lukashenko said Minsk would announce the official damage level after an audit.
State news agency Belta quoted President Lukashenko as saying: "He (Russian President Vladimir Putin) clearly understands the need to compensate for this damage. He himself declared that the incident caused great damage to Russia. Meanwhile, Belarus is at the center of the damage. We suffered the most damage. He publicly admitted that the damage was huge. Exactly how big? Experts will calculate. I think the Russians should not deny the fact that the damage is in the hundreds of millions of dollars."
Late last month, Russia stopped pumping oil from the Druzhba pipeline (owned by Russian state energy corporation Transneft) to Western Europe and Germany because of contaminated oil, helping to lift global oil prices to a six-month high and sending refineries in Europe scrambling to find supplies.
The problem of contaminated crude oil is not new to the Russian energy industry. However, Transneft is the state-owned company that has a monopoly on pipeline transportation in Russia, so European buyers of crude oil currently have very few alternatives to Russian crude.
