Republic

MINSK, 29 June (BelTA) – Belarusian consumers will not be affected by the cutoff of electricity supplies from Russia. Russia halted electricity supplies to Belarus at 00:00 on 29 June, BelTA learnt from spokeswoman for the Belarusian Energy Ministry Lyudmila Zenkovich.

“Right now the Energy Ministry and Belenergo are looking into possibilities to level off the situation,” she noted.

Imports of Russian electricity account for only 12% of Belarus’ needs. In 2011 Belarus intends to import 3 billion kWh of electricity from Russia in line with the contract with INTER RAO UES.

However, Belarusian consumers are not dependent on electricity imports since the country has enough energy-generation facilities. For example, the total power consumption in Belarus in 2010 amounted to 37.46 billion kWh. Of them 32.3 billion kWh was produced by Belenergo, 2.26 billion kWh by isolated generating plants. In January-May 2011 the electricity output made up 14 billion kWh. Electricity is imported primarily to diversify the country’s energy consumption mix as well as for economic reasons.

INTER RAO UES cut off electricity supplies to Belarus over unpaid debts. In early June, the debt was RUB1.5 billion. Belarusian and Russian representatives met in Moscow on 10 June to discuss the debt repayment schedule. Following the meeting, the sides signed the payment schedule according to which Belarus pledged to repay the March-May debt before 5 July in three tranches. The first tranche equaling about one-third of the total debt was made by Belenergo on 14 June. The second tranche was scheduled for 20 June, but Belarus failed to keep to the schedule due to the lack of foreign currency funds.

INTER RAO UES is the Russian energy company, operating a number of generation and distribution assets in Russia and abroad. The installed capacity is around 28 GW.