{"id":125766,"date":"2022-05-28T16:07:53","date_gmt":"2022-05-28T23:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=125766"},"modified":"2022-05-28T16:07:53","modified_gmt":"2022-05-28T23:07:53","slug":"sri-lanka-to-pay-72-6m-for-90000-tonne-russian-oil-shipment-minister-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2022\/05\/28\/sri-lanka-to-pay-72-6m-for-90000-tonne-russian-oil-shipment-minister-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka to pay $72.6m for 90,000-tonne Russian oil shipment, minister says"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The New Arab Staff & Agencies<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The 90,000-tonne consignment of Russian oil was ordered through Dubai-based Coral Energy, according to Sri Lankan Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka<\/a> will pay $72.6 million to buy a 90,000-tonne shipment of Russian oil<\/a> docked at Colombo’s port for weeks, its energy minister said on Saturday, as the island nation works to restart its only refinery and address a crippling energy crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka<\/a> has struggled to pay for fuel, food and medicine imports due to a severe shortage of foreign currency. An unprecedented financial crisis has also forced the country to default on some external debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the rest of Asia, Sri Lanka wants to shift to long-term crude tenders to hedge against high crude spot prices, but dwindling foreign exchange reserves have hampered its ambitions, the power minister said on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I have reached out to multiple countries, including Russia, for support to import crude and other petroleum products,” Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera told reporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 90,000-tonne consignment was ordered through Dubai-based Coral Energy, Wijesekera said, adding that the payment would facilitate restarting the country’s sole refinery, which has been closed since 25 March.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The next shipment will also be ordered from the same company. Another consignment will be needed within the next two weeks to keep the refinery running continuously,” Wijesekera said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Queues of two-wheelers and cars outside fuel stations, sometimes miles long, have become a familiar sight for Sri Lankans this year, with high global oil prices exacerbating their misery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wijesekera estimates that Sri Lanka will need $568 million to pay for a dozen fuel shipments needed in June.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The country is struggling to pay $31 million for a furnace oil shipment docked at Colombo’s port.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

State-run Ceylon Petroleum Corporation needs $735 million to clear letters of credit for previous oil purchases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Total foreign reserves were $1.82 billion at the end of April.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Protests have rocked Sri Lanka<\/a> in recent days, with demonstrators demanding the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa over the financial crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Reuters<\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New Arab Staff & Agencies The 90,000-tonne consignment of Russian oil was ordered through Dubai-based Coral Energy, according to Sri Lankan Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera. Sri Lanka will pay $72.6 million to buy a 90,000-tonne shipment of Russian oil docked at Colombo’s port for weeks, its energy minister said on Saturday, as the island nation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}