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Another tanker laden with Venezuelan oil for Belarus arrives in Ukrainian port

Another tanker laden with Venezuelan crude oil for Belarus arrived at Ukraine’s Odessa seaport on July 31, a seaport traffic control officer told BelaPAN.

The vessel brought a shipment of 77,560 tons of oil and is expected to unload by the morning of August 3.

The shipment will be then carried by rail to the Mazyr oil refinery in the Homyel region.

The seaport officer said that a new vessel carrying Venezuelan crude oil for Belarus would arrive in Odessa on August 10.

A contract was signed in Caracas on March 17 for Venezuela to supply up to four million tons of oil to Belarus before the end of the year.

Although the first tankers laden with Venezuelan oil have already arrived, it is necessary to work faster for the Venezuelan oil deliveries to total four million tons.

Five shipments of crude have already been delivered to the two Belarusian oil refineries, with four transported through Odessa to the Mazyr refinery and one through Estonia’s Muuga seaport to the Naftan refinery in Navapolatsk, Vitsyebsk region.

The rail route from Estonia is shorter than that from Ukraine, as there is a distance of 850 kilometers (528 miles) between Muuga and Navapolatsk compared with 1,051 kilometers (653 miles) between Odessa and Mazyr.

The government also considers the possibility of bringing Venezuelan crude to Belarus via Latvian and Lithuanian seaports.