Russian oil companies receive nearly 60 bln rubles under damping mechanism in July vs 34.5 bln rubles in June

MOSCOW. Aug 5 (Interfax) - Payments from the Russian budget to oil companies under the fuel damping mechanism amounted to 59.9 billion rubles in July 2025, according to materials on the formation and use of additional oil and gas revenues of the federal budget published on the Finance Ministry's website.

In June, similar payments totaled 34.5 billion rubles. In May, they stood at 42.5 billion rubles, in April - 62.7 billion rubles, in March - 100.3 billion rubles, in February - 148.3 billion rubles and in January - 156.4 billion rubles. Thus, July marked the first time in 2025 that the month-on-month decline in payments was interrupted.

In total, damping payments to oil companies for 7M amounted to 604.6 billion rubles.

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov previously said that payments to oil companies under the damper in 2025 are expected to be around 1.4 trillion rubles below plan - at around 2.6 trillion rubles. "Prices fell, and accordingly, revenues decreased, so we will return less to oil producers," he said.

The government pays the damper as a subsidy to oil companies to help them contain domestic fuel prices when export netbacks are high.

In 2024, oil companies received 1.815 trillion rubles from the budget through the damping mechanism, compared to 1.588 trillion rubles in 2023, 2.171 trillion rubles in 2022 and 674.5 billion rubles in 2021. Due to market conditions in 2020, oil companies paid 356.6 billion rubles into the budget under the damping mechanism. In 2019, the budget returned 282.2 billion rubles to oil companies under the mechanism.