Belarus stops exports of oil products to EU over sanctions, refinery utilization down - deputy PM

YEKATERINBURG/MINSK. April 19 (Interfax) - Belarus has been forced to end exports of oil products to countries of the European Union due to sanctions, and the utilization rates of the country's two oil refineries have been reduced to the level required for the domestic market, Yuri Nazarov, Belarusian deputy prime minister overseeing the fuel and energy complex, said.

"Under restrictions, including those of sanctions, due to which we can't deliver to the European Union, we have optimized oil processing at our two refineries in order to meet the needs of the domestic market," Nazarov told journalists in Yekaterinburg on Tuesday, when commenting on the situation surrounding oil refining.

The parties have forgone formula pricing under the current circumstances, and the price of oil supplies from Russia to Belarus is "absolutely comfortable," Nazarov said. "But in this situation, we have agreed on oil pricing with the Russian side. We have an absolutely comfortable price today. We have moved away from all those there where formula pricing for oil passage is present, it's clear there, in Russian rubles. That is, such an issue has been resolved here, as it were," he said.

Belarus is expanding cooperation with Russia in the sphere of petrochemicals, Nazarov said. "Petrochemicals are a more interesting, viable [issue] for us. Not just petroleum products, but petrochemicals. The potential of our two countries, in my view, hasn't been laid bare here," he said.

Nazarov also talked about negotiations with Tatneft on the production of raw materials for Belarusian producers of technical yarn. The raw materials used to be imported from the EU. "Oil refining projects like this need to be implemented right now - ambitious ones that will allow us to draw resources into circulation and get a product as a result which we were importing from abroad en masse," he said.

Due to intensifying Western sanctions against Belarus as an ally of Russia, which is carrying out a military operation in Ukraine, the utilization rates of two Belarusian oil refineries, Naftan and Mozyr, have been reduced by more than half, significantly decreasing product exports.

The needs of Belarus's domestic market for oil products total 7-8 million tonnes per year. The capacities of the country's two oil refineries, which have been upgraded in recent years at a cost of around $3 billion, allow for processing 24 million tonnes of oil a year.