OREANDA-NEWS. April 28, 2010. In line with earlier agreements Ukraine has started unloading Venezuelan oil for Belarus, the press service of the Ukrainian Transport and Communication Ministry told BelTA.

The day before the tanker Sea Star cast anchor at a berth of the tanker basin of the Odessa commercial seaport. 80,000 tonnes of Venezuelan oil will be unloaded and sent to Mozyr Oil Refinery by rail.

At present economists are busy calculating the profitability of delivering Venezuelan oil to Belarus via Odessa. If the result of the experiment is favorable, the oil traffic between Venezuela and Belarus may reach 4 million tonnes per annum in accordance with Belarusian-Venezuelan agreements.

According to Nikolai Pavlyuk, warden of the Odessa commercial seaport, transshipment of transit oil for Belarus is not a problem for the port. The viability of the route is more dependent on the synchronous operation of petroleum tank farms and the availability of railway tanks.

The Belarusian-Ukrainian intergovernmental commission for economic cooperation instructed task groups of relevant ministries and agencies to calculate the logistics of the project at the Kyiv session on 15 April. First Vice Premier of Belarus Vladimir Semashko and Ukraine’s First Vice Premier Andrei Klyuyev remarked that the project is mutually beneficial for the two countries. The task groups are now busy working on a draft intergovernmental agreement on Venezuelan oil transportation to Belarus via Ukraine in order to allow signing the agreement soon.