The former Soviet Baltic republics are receiving western help in coping with their oil shortages and are putting more pressure on Moscow to increase crude and petroleum product deliveries.
The U.K. will send 90 million pounds sterling to Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, part of which likely will be used to buy oil in western markets. The money is compensation for gold shipped to a British bank for safekeeping during the 1930s.
Big Swedish companies are being asked to contribute to a fund to finance fuel for Estonia. Norway and Finland already have helped the Baltic nations ease their oil shortages.
Estonia, which formerly exported gas processed from oil shale to Russia's Leningrad region and piped shale gas to Estonian cities, is studying the possibility of reviving its depressed and highly polluting oil shale industry.
The republic's shale mines also provided fuel for large Estonian electrical power plants near the Baltic Sea as well as small volumes of oil and petrochemical products.
Estonia's oil shale industry declined during most of the 1980s, when Russian natural gas and crude production soared.
Moscow then decided oil shale was an uneconomical fuel and reduced production, which peaked in 1980.
Estonia last month increased the price of 93 octane gasoline to 5.77 rubles/l. from 3.76 rubles/l.
However, the new prices are available only to official vehicles at government owned service stations.
Private cars are barred from these stations and must pay free market prices of 10-11 rubles/l. for similar gasoline.
LATVIA, LITHUANIA
Elsewhere, Latvia continues to press Russia for more oil (OGJ, Jan. 13, Newsletter).
Besides seeking 4-6% of the petroleum products piped across Latvian territory to the tanker port of Ventspils and asking Moscow to pay in refined products for food supplied to Russian troops still stationed in Latvia, Riga officials demand that Latvian workers building roads in western Siberia's huge Tyumen oil producing region be paid "several hundred thousand tons of crude" for their labor.
Latvia warns that previously guaranteed deliveries of grain and other agricultural products will no longer be assured unless the Baltic republic receives gasoline, diesel fuel, and fuel oil in exchange. If Russia doesn't provide oil in payment, products from a number of Latvian enterprises that have a monopoly on some goods manufactured in the former U.S.S.R. will no longer be delivered.
On the other hand, "under mutually profitable conditions," such as Moscow's providing more crude and refined products, Latvia says it is prepared to keep its ports open to Russian ships.
In Lithuania, meanwhile, efforts are under way to hike production from its nine small oil fields, which at best can provide 15% of the republic's crude requirements for a few years. Lithuania's energy shortage is so critical it has placed strict limits on the volumes of gasoline, diesel fuel, and motor oil that can move beyond its borders.
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