Belarus ramps up fuel exports to gasoline-thirsty Russia
- Ukrainian drone attacks have caused Russian fuel shortages
- Russian regions face rationing, price freezes
- Belarus September gasoline exports to Russia reach 49,000 tons (t)
- Exports via Russian ports up 1% for month, down 40% year to date
Belarusian rail-transported gasoline exports to Russia jumped fourfold month-on-month in September, as Moscow sought to tackle fuel shortages caused by Ukrainian attacks on its energy infrastructure, industry sources said on Tuesday.
Several Russian regions have introduced rationing and have temporarily frozen fuel prices in recent weeks amid a scarcity of popular types of gasoline brought on by the drone strikes, which targeted refineries among other energy installations. Moscow has also restricted gasoline and diesel exports.
Russia increased fuel imports from Belarus last year as well to cover shortages.
According to the sources, gasoline supplies via rail from refineries in Belarus to the Russian domestic market rose to 49,000 metric t, or 14,500 bpd, last month. They also said diesel deliveries amounted to 33,000 t in September.
At the same time, gasoline transit from Belarus for further export via Russian ports edged up by around 1% last month to 140,000 t.
Belarus has used Russian ports for transshipment of its refined petroleum products since March 2021 under a cooperation agreement signed between Moscow and Minsk.
However, such transshipments dropped by nearly 40% year-on-year to 1.17 MMt between January and September, according to the sources and calculations, due to a decline in refining throughput.
Belarus' two refining facilities - the Naftan and Mozyr oil refineries - each has annual capacity of 12 MMt, or some 240,000 bpd. But they typically produce around 9 MMtpy, or roughly 180,000 bpd.
Comments