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Belarusian state-owned company continues legal fight over pipeline oil ownership

 

A Belarusian state-owned company has filed an appeal with Latvia’s Supreme Court against a ruling that denied its ownership of the 110,000 tons of oil inside a pipeline linking the Belarusian city of Polatsk and Latvia’s Ventspils seaport.

Polatsktransnafta Druzhba, which operates the pipeline, claims that it owns the “technological oil” and filed the suit after Belarusian-Latvian enterprise LatRosTrans attempted to pump the oil out of the unused pipeline.

In December last year, Latvia’s Latgale District Court turned down the Belarusian company’s suit and allowed LatRosTrans to pump the oil out of the pipeline.

Reports suggest that it may take Latvia’s Supreme Court a year or even 18 months to set the date for the appeal hearing. LatRosTrans has been banned from pumping the oil out of the pipeline until the appeal is heard.

On November 25, 2010, LatRosTrans began to pump out the oil that was left in the pipeline after it was shut down in 2003, insisting that it was the owner of the oil, estimated at about 150,000 tons worth some $90 million, and that it had the legal right to get it out of the pipeline.

The following day, the Belarusian State Petrochemical Industry Concern, which controls Polatsktransnafta Druzhba, issued a statement saying that it had documents proving its ownership rights and that the pumping of the technological oil from the pipeline would make it impossible to use the pipeline in the future.

The pumping was stopped shortly afterward, but some 40,000 tons had already been removed. //BelaPAN