After losing the confidence of the powers in Moscow, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko is seeking alternative sources of energy supplies and his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chavez, has
offered him a helping hand. The Belarusian-Venezuelan joint-venture ‘Petrolera BeloVenesolana’ produced more than 1.3 billion tones of oil in 2008-2009 in Venezuela. Up until now Belarus was receiving 240,000-500,000 tones of oil per month, but the new agreement stipulates 10 million ton shipments a year.
However, the current route of Venezuelan oil shipments via Odessa raises its price to extremes, so the Azerbaijani State Oil Company (SOCAR) was invited to participate in the project. Negotiations between SOCAR chief executive officer Rovnag Abdullayev and the Belarusian President were held last
week. Belarus is interested in purchasing oil from Azerbaijan using the swap-scheme - replacing oil from Venezuela, which will be sold on the US market. It is also planning to buy Azerbaijani liquefied gas and to construct a plant to dilute it. According to experts, this scheme might work out and bring substantial benefits to all sides.
Mr Lukashenko said that he has discussed the issue with Azerbaijani President, Ilham Aliyev, and that he had generally approved the scheme. SOCAR hasn’t yet made any official reply to the Belarusian
proposal.
Belarus needs alternative oil suppliers after Russia introduced export duties for Belarusian oil shipments. However, Russia's ‘Transneft’ oil company is seriously concerned about the switching of the
‘Odessa-Brody’ oil pipeline to reverse mode, introduced to fulfil the swap scheme. The company warned its European buyers of possible interruptions in oil supplies due to the new pipeline mode.
If the Azerbaijani-Belarusian-Venezuelan project is to be carried out, the export capabilities of Russian oil companies will be reduced considerably, and Baku is aware of that. The benefits of the scheme
might be lowered for Azerbaijan by the risk of spoiling good relations with the Kremlin, so Baku will try to act as carefully as possible. As for the natural gas, President Lukashenko said that purchasing gas
from Azerbaijan is more profitable that buying it from Russia's ‘Gazprom’, despite the longer route from Baku.
Evgeniy Krishtalev, exclusively to VK.
