 On 9 July 2008, after signing an agreement between the United States and the Czech Republic to host a tracking radar for an antiballistic missile system, the flow of Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline to the Czech Republic started to reduce.Although officially the linkage between reduction of oil supplies and the radar agreement was not claimed, it was suspected.Transneft denied any connections with radar agreement, saying that reduction was purely commercial as Tatneft and Bashneft started to refine more oil at their own refineries.