Russia Threatens Belarus Trial For Increasing Oil Transit Tariff

Unilateral increase of the tariff for Russian oil transportation by Belarus is “unthinkable”, the situation is possible to resolve in court.

Head of FAS Department for Regulating the Fuel-and-Energy Complex Dmitry Makhonin said that.

– The FAS, being a regulatory body, only received a letter informing on the intention of Belarus to change the tariff, that the tariff was changed we in fact, have also learnt from the open media sources. At the moment there are no official materials, informing us on the change of prices, sent either by Transneft or by the Belarusian competition agency, well, in fact, we understand that it indeed was changed, – he said during the interview with the TV channel “Russia 24”.

– And it means that we actually have to deal with violation of the provisions of our intergovernmental agreement and methodologies, and this means that we bring into question the legitimacy of this procedure, – ria.ru quotes Makhonon. – I can directly say, that the increase of which we know, in 1,5 times, it, of course, is unthinkable, because we need to understand that the transit flow has not actually changed.

Transneft considers the unscheduled increase in tariffs for the transportation of crude oil by Belarus a violation of the contract. As the company head’s adviser Igor Demin has previously informed, the company informed the FAS Russia about the situation.

He explained that according to the decision of the Ministry of anti-monopoly regulation and trade of the Republic of Belarus of 28 September 2016, the tariff for the Russian oil transit through Belarus had been increased by 50%. The decision will come into force on 11 October, 2016.