No ‘special discount’ on fuel purchase, says Russian minister

Petroleum Minister Musadik Malik has said that despite the increased yield of furnace oil during the refining as well as high operational costs of the import, the Russian fuel would be significantly beneficial for Pakistan, even as a Russian minister ruled out any sort of exclusive discount for Islamabad on the purchase of ‘Urals’ crude from Moscow. “Oil deliveries to Pakistan have begun. There is no special discount; for Pakistan, it is the same as for other buyers,” Energy Minister Nikolai Shulginov told the Russian state media on Friday on the sidelines of an international economic conference in St. Petersburg, according to a VOA report. The Russian minister, however, confirmed that it had started exporting oil to Pakistan and had agreed to accept Chinese currency as payment. But the deal did not include any exclusive discounts on the purchase deal, he added, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced last week that the first “Russian discounted crude oil cargo” had arrived and offloaded at the port in Karachi. Pakistan’s petroleum minister later revealed that Pakistan had paid in yuan for the first government-to-government Russian crude oil import.