Russia and Belarus neared a deal on Wednesday to resume oil supplies via a major export pipeline, as Minsk removed a transit duty that had angered Moscow, according to Reuters. European customers said crude could start flowing within hours. Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko reached an understanding to resolve the three-day-old halt to the Druzhba ('Friendship') pipeline during a telephone call with Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, Lukashenko's office said. "As a result of the discussion, a compromise was found which will make it possible to unblock this dead-end situation," it said in a statement. Moscow angered the European Union by cutting off all oil supplies on Sunday night through Druzhba, which carries 1.5 million barrels per day of crude oil from Russia through Belarus to Europe -- about 10 percent of the EU's needs. Belarussian Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky said late on Wednesday that Minsk had withdrawn an oil transit duty it imposed last week, meeting Russia's main demand for ending the dispute. His deputy Andrei Kobyakov said Druzhba would resume operations very soon. Sidorsky will fly to Moscow on Thursday and he said he expected the Russian side to respond by lifting the trade restrictions it has imposed on Belarus. A Russian official welcomed the lifting of the duty but said Moscow wanted Belarus to give back some 80,000 tonnes of oil, which it says was taken by Minsk during the dispute, before restarting oil flows via Druzhba. "If Minsk starts pumping this crude towards Europe, Russia is ready to resume supplies from its territory within four hours," Deputy Economy Minister Andrei Sharonov told reporters. EU leaders said the stoppage made it harder to trust Russia as an energy supplier and berated both states for failing to consult key customers like Germany before turning off the taps. "The cut in oil supplies from Russia is unacceptable...This raises a problem, a real problem of credibility. We would like to guarantee that this does not happen in the future," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said. Claude Mandil, chief of the International Energy Agency that advises industrialised nations, said the disruption had shaken confidence in Russia as affected countries in Europe had to tap their strategic reserves. Moscow said it was forced to act because Belarus was siphoning off oil from the pipeline, which serves Poland, Germany, Slovakia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.
