Yesterday Russia and Kazakhstan signed the document to amend the agreement on economic cooperation in field of oil and oil products deliveries to Kazakhstan till December 9, 2010.
Russian Minister of Energy Anatolii Yanovksy and Kazakhstan Minister of Oil and Gas Uzakbay Karabalin have attended the signing ceremony, which took place in presence of the two countries’ presidents.
On Thursday Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan signed the agreement on the Eurasian Economic Union, which will come to effect on January 1, 2015. It is, particularly, offered to withdraw oil and oil products from the free trade regime on a stage-by-stage basis.
Belarus was strongly opposed to that, because every year it transfers about $4 billion worth of duties from export of oil products manufactured from duty-free Russian oil to the Russian budget.
Russia and Belarus have amended to the intergovernmental agreement, according to which from 2015 the Belarus budget will have at least $1.5 billion worth duties from oil products export and Russia will supply the Belarus oil refineries with duty-free oil.
As far as Kazakhstan is concerned, at present there is a quota of duty-free delivery of oil and light oil products from Russia to Kazakhstan and delivery of light oil products from Kazakhstan to the third countries and dark oil products from Russia to Kazakhstan is banned. The details of yesterday’s bilateral agreement are not disclosed yet.