Russian Crude Stops Flowing to Europe. Who turned off the tap?

Russian crude oil stopped flowing to Western Europe through a major pipeline across Belarus this week. Who turned off the tap? Russia has raised its prices for oil and gas to market levels, after decades of giving Belarus and other former republics of the Soviet Union deep discounts compared with Western European customers.

But a prolonged disruption could be worrisome, writes Steven Lee Myers in The New York Times. The pipeline is one of the larest in the world. Its name, Druzhba, means friendship but the cut affected supplies of crude oil headed to Poland, Germany and Ukraine. Now the European Union has to hold talks with Russia and Belarus in a bid to resolve a row which has led to a cut in oil supplies to much of Europe.

The shutdown of Druzhba, one of the world’s largest oil pipelines, came a week after Russia and Belarus negotiated a last-minute agreement on supplies of natural gas to Belarus and their prices. Minutes before midnight on New Year's Eve, Lukashenka's regime was forced into a humiliating climbdown in its pricing dispute with Russia's state-controlled natural-gas monopoly Gazprom. This time Minsk says Russia has not been paying a transit tax for moving oil through Belarus, imposed after Russia doubled the price it charges Belarus for gas.

BBC economics correspondent Andrew Walker says the suspension is an uncomfortable reminder to Europe of the large and growing role that Russia has in meeting its energy needs.

The European Commission said it was investigating whether the Russian move would have an impact on another branch of the pipeline, which runs to Slovakia and south-east Europe.

The decision to shut down the Druzhba pipeline is the latest twist in an energy row between Belarus and Moscow that began when Russian energy giant Gazprom forced Belarus to accept a huge increase in the price of Russian gas.

For Blog finanza seems a deja vu from the first montho of last year. But this time the cut is not is not against the orange rebels in Ucraine, but against Belaurs, "la più stretta alleata di Mosca".