Russia to clear KZ oil schemes at customs

Credit: ©REUTERS

Russia will clear oil schemes of Kazakhstan through customs, reports Tengrinews.kz referring to “Izvestiya”.

According to Izvestiya newspaper, Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia will meet Nursultan Nazarbayev, his Kazakh colleague, at the end of October to discuss the situation with re-export of the Russian oil to China. In particular, the Russia is not happy with the plans of KazMunayGas, the state oil company, on increases in supply of the Russian oil to China without payment of export duty to the Russian Federation budget.

According to the newspaper, the scheme used in Kazakhstan that allows to evade export duties is technically legal, but it can lead to shortfalls in income of the Russian budget amounting to billion dollars per year. It is known that currently the Russian government is undertaking measures aimed at suppression of such practice. The RF Federal Customs Service, for its part, reported about its readiness to control the execution of decisions by sending its representatives to the customs posts of Kazakhstan and Belarus.

The edition reminds that KazMunayGas intends to increase the capacity of the export Atasu-Alashankou oil pipeline to China from 10 up to 20 mln tons per year. This was voiced by Sauat Mynbayev, the RoK Minister of Oil and Gas during the press conference in Almaty at the opening ceremony of the oil and gas KIOGE exhibition.

In his turn, Bulat Akchulakov, the RoK Vice-Minister of Oil and Gas, clarified that the indicative plan for 2012 provides for transportation to China along the Atasu-Alashankou oil pipeline 2 mln tons of the Russian oil. However, the Vice-Minister noted that oil from Russia is supplied in small volumes. Akchulakov couldn't name the suppliers of this oil. He only noted that the buyer is the Chinese CNPC.

This statement caused an extremely nervous reaction of Transneft representatives, said the source in the company to Izvestiya. According to Transneft export schedules the delivery of the Russian oil through Kazakhstan to China is not envisaged.

As it was explained by the newspaper sources, legally such ‘geographical swap’ isn't a violation of the customs legislation and considered only as logistics optimization. However, only after the approval by Kazakhstan of a dumping tariff for pumping oil to China, Russia ‘noticed’ that physical volumes of the Russian oil are delivered to China without payment of duties. It is not excluded that the cancellation of claims to swap schemes in exchange for tariff increase will be the presidents’ topic of negotiations, the newspaper makes a prediction.

WKT