EU delegates are to hold talks with Russia and Belarus officials in a bid to bring an end to an energy dispute that threatens to leave Europe short of oil.
Russian oil company Transneft has ceased piping oil through its neighbor Belarus after Minsk imposed a custom tax on the commodity. As a result, a number of European countries, including Germany and Poland, have had their oil supplies sourced through Belarus cut off.
According to the International Energy Agency, there is no immediate concern of shortages, as the affected countries have several days’ worth of supply and because Transneft is rerouting partial deliveries through other countries.
However, the EU has now stepped in, in a bid to resolve the issue to ensure that future disruption of the kind seen a year ago when Russia was in dispute with Ukraine is not repeated.
Transneft has reportedly stopped piping its oil through Belarus because of concerns that it is being illegally siphoned off. Worryingly for western Europe, the current dispute has strong echoes of Russia’s argument with Ukraine 12 months ago, which it also accused of siphoning off supplies.