Pipeliners

24.01.2007 - MosNews - Russia’s western neighbor Belarus will demand that Russia pay rent for the land under pipelines that it uses to pump oil and gas to Europe, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Tuesday, Jan. 23. As MosNews has reported, the conflict between Russia and Belarus began when state-controlled gas giant Gazprom demanded that Belarus pay higher price for Russian gas or face the cutoff. The conflict threatened to repeat the situation in January 2006, when Russia temporarily cut gas supplies to Ukraine over a similar gas price conflict, while Ukraine cut transit deliveries to Europe, undermining Russia’s reputation as a reliable supplier. Moscow and Minsk were able to solve the gas price issue two minutes prior to New Year’s midnight, securing gas supplies to Western Europe. However, Alexander Lukashenko decided to avenge himself and imposed a transit duty on Russian oil going to Europe. The conflict even led Russia to shut down the Druzhba oil link to Belarus for three days. The situation was resolved, but now the authoritative and unpredictable Belarusian leader came up with another idea of how to milk Russia for money. “Without fuss or ambitions, we will take corresponding measures in line with international law and will demand that they pay us,” Lukashenko was quoted by the UPI agency. At present time Belarus only collects rent for land under compressor stations. But the country’s State Property Committee told Interfaxt agency that Russia “should pay for the forest lands under the pipelines, because they are not being used for their original purpose”. The Belarusian official said that “the draft of the law has been prepared that will set the rent for these lands”. Belarus is a transit territory to Gazprom’s Yamal-Europe gas pipeline, Druzhba oil link and Zapad-Transnefteproduct oil product pipelines. According to the Belarusian government, all the pipelines occupy a territory of 40,000 hectares of Belarusian land.