Analysis

Belarus sees sharp fall in oil exports

slovakia-poland gas pipeline

The National Statistics Committee of Belarus has announced that the export of petroleum products from the country dropped by 17 per cent to 3.8 million tons in January-April compared to the same period of last year.

According to Belarusian state news agency Belta, petroleum supplies decreased by 18.6 per cent between January and April in a year-on-year comparison with the same period of 2018.

The statistics office said that oil exports fell by nine per cent to 488,000 tons, resulting in a decrease of 11.4 per cent (222.7 million US dollars) in value terms in the aforementioned period.

At the same time, oil imports totalled in six million tons, 0.5 per cent less than in 2018 while the import of oil products dropped by 95 per cent, to 73,600 tons.

On April 19, the Belarusian government reported that oil coming from Russia was contaminated. A month later, Russian officials said that the amount of poor quality oil that they had started to pump back to Russian refineries was close to one million tons.