Russian Oil Price Index: still waiting

Alexey Belogoryev, Research and Development Director of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to Monocle magazine (2025. No. 45) on the current and future demand for Russian oil price indices and why the Russian Ministry of Finance has so far refused to use them for tax purposes.

According to him, two conditions must be met for the Ministry of Finance to switch to assessments by Russian agencies. First, these agencies must prove the long-term relevance of their data to the real state of the market, and the data itself must gain a reputation. By and large, before they can be used by the government, they must become widely demanded by a wide range of economic agents. At the very least, it takes time.

The second condition that Alexey Belogoryev considers necessary is that any change should answer the question "why?" What will improve from the point of view of tax collections and tax administration when switching to alternative data? And it is difficult to answer this question from the point of view of material benefits. When the transition to domestic indicators was actively discussed in 2022-2023, the main concern was that with the next wave of sanctions, the Ministry of Finance might simply lose access to such data. But this did not happen, and now it is clearly not expected.

"Argus data can be criticized a lot for methodological flaws (although which index doesn't have them?), but they still more or less accurately and, importantly, timely detect changes in price trends. And this is probably the key thing that is required of them," concluded the representative of the Institute for Energy and Finance.

Alexey Belogoryev believes that the transition to domestic data is only a matter of time. In his opinion, the Ministry of Finance adheres to healthy conservatism and waits until through competitive selection and demand from business (namely, it is primary). One or two indices that inspire the most confidence will crystallize, but this is also a matter of more than one year.