Baltic, Belarus, Good for Business, Lithuania, Logistics, Oil, Port, Russia

The Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker Front Ocelot left the Finnish southern port of Porvoo early Tuesday morning after arriving from Russia's Primorsk port from which Transneft ships oil, according to the vessel tracking websites marinetraffic.com and vesselfinder.com.

"The Front Ocelot tanker bringing crude oil will arrive in the port of Klaipeda on March 4," Klaipedos Nafta, the oil and LNG terminals operator in Lithuania, told LETA/BNS.

Two tankers with oil for Belarus are expected to arrive in Klaipeda in March, bringing 85,000 tons of crude each, Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai (Lithuanian Railways) confirmed to LETA/BNS on February. Belarus later said that the ships would deliver Russian oil it had bought via traders. 

Belarus' oil export company BNK told the Lithuanian state railway company that it expected the tankers to arrive on March 3-4 and March 13-15. 

Lithuania's state-owned railway company Lietuvos Gelezinkeliai (Lithuanian Railways) plans to transport 100-150 railcars of oil per day from Klaipeda to the Belarusian border. It will take around 10 days to transport the entire cargo. 

The first tanker with Norwegian oil for Belarus arrived in Klaipeda in late January. The Breiviken tanker then delivered around 80,000 tons of oil for Naftan. The last time oil had been delivered via Lithuania to Belarus was in 2017. 

President Alexander Lukashenko said Belarus would look for alternative sources after Russia sharply reduced pipelined oil exports to the country in early 2020.