Belarus has asked Moscow to send all its 2011 oil exports via pipelines to cut transport costs, a government source told Prime news agency.
"Railway oil supplies are a great deal more expensive than supplies via a pipeline - at least by $40 per ton, which in turn makes the whole oil refining process more expensive. We are interested in cutting the price of imported oil to boost the efficiency of the whole process," the source said.
He said that oil refining margins had fallen because of a high premium to the price of oil supplied by Russian companies.
Belarus is to import 21.68 million tons of Russian oil this year, including 3.5 million tons by rail.
