Russia restarted the flow of oil through its main oil export pipeline this morning after Belarus dropped an oil transit duty imposed last week and agreed to return oil Moscow said it had taken illegally.
"Belarus has fully returned 79,000 tonnes of oil. Transneft started to pump oil in the direction of Belarus. The Druzhba pipeline is working normally," the vice-president of Russian pipeline monopoly Transneft, said.
Russia, the world's second biggest oil exporter, had closed the Druzhba ("Friendship") pipeline, its largest single oil export route, for more than 60 hours, cutting European Union oil supplies by around 1.5 million barrels of oil per day.
The shutdown marked the climax of a trade dispute in which Moscow doubled gas export prices to Belarus at the New Year and imposed a crippling crude oil export duty equivalent to 10 per cent of the gross domestic product of its western neighbour.
Belarus, once Moscow's most loyal ally, responded by slapping the oil transit duty of $45 per tonne on Russian oil piped across its territory, effective from January 1st.
Transneft said it shut the pipeline when Belarus began siphoning off oil to take payment of the levy in kind, and only agreed to restart the pumps after the missing oil was returned.
Belarussian Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky will hold talks with Russian counterpart Mikhail Fradkov today. Mr Sidorsky said yesterday he expected Russia to lift its own trade restrictions on Belarus.