Sergey Kondratiev, Principal Director on Economic Studies at the Institute for Energy and Finance, made comments to Kommersant FM about retail fuel prices.
Gasoline and diesel prices have gone up again. In particular, diesel immediately rose in price by almost 6%, according to data from the St. Petersburg Stock Exchange. Prices began to rise against the background of the Kommersant report that the authorities are ready to partially lift the ban on the export of petroleum products. The government can make such a decision as early as October 4.
Consumers will see the effect of lifting the bans only in a few months, Sergey Kondratiev explained:
"In recent months, about 0.9-1 million tons of diesel fuel per month have been supplied for export via pipelines — this is about 30% of Russian exports of commercial diesel from the whole, so the change in the situation related to the export ban is not radical. The second point: in fact, we have very serious lags in price changes in retail and in the wholesale market. The wholesale market reacts to bans, changes in regulation very quickly, and the retail market with a lag of one and a half to two months, because this fuel must be bought, delivered to the gas station.
I think that the decision to lift the ban on gasoline exports is unlikely to happen soon. The market for this type of fuel is experiencing more problems. In fact, about 10-12% of all gasoline produced was exported, so here, probably, the situation with a possible surplus is more remote."
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