MOSCOW (Reuters) -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 told Reuters 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 tons, or 14,500 barrels per day (bpd), last month. They also said diesel deliveries amounted to 33,000 tons 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 tons.
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 million tons between January and September, according to the sources and Reuters calculations, due to a decline in refining throughput.
Belarus’ two refining facilities – the Naftan and Mozyr oil refineries – each has annual capacity of 12 million tons, or some 240,000 bpd. But they typically produce around 9 million tons per year, or roughly 180,000 bpd.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Joe Bavier)
