Russian oil companies would have been in negative territory on damper for first time in 5 years in Jan if not for Sept recalculation
MOSCOW. Feb 4 (Interfax) - Oil companies were supposed to pay around 13 billion rubles in January into the Russian budget for the fuel damper for December, but instead received 16.9 billion rubles in damper payments from the budget.
This situation arose due to a recalculation of the damper for gasoline for September 2025, for the payments of which changes were made to the Tax Code in the autumn.
As previously explained to Interfax by the Finance Ministry, the payments to oil companies of the damper for September totaling 43.8 billion rubles only account for accruals on diesel fuel; for gasoline, they were not calculated due to high exchange prices for this product. Additional accruals for gasoline for September were made after changes to the legislation that increased the cutoff point after which the dampener zeroes out by 10 percentage points (p.p.). Subsequently, a decision was made on a moratorium on reducing the damper to zero until May 2026.
In this way, in December oil companies received around 30 billion rubles for the damper on gasoline for September. From this amount, around 13 billion rubles are deducted (what oil companies must pay for the actual damper for December). The result is 16.9 billion rubles - the final damper received by oil companies from the budget for December, which was paid out in January. In accordance with tax legislation, calculations for the damper are made for the previous month.
Previously, industry analysts interviewed by Interfax expected that the damper for December would go into negative territory, with total payments from oil companies to the budget amounting to around 13 billion rubles. The negative damper in December occurred due to changes in market and economic conditions - there was a drop in prices for petroleum products on external markets (the lower fuel prices on external markets, the lower the damper), and the discount of the Russian Urals oil price relative to Brent also increased (the larger the discount, the lower the damper).
The last time oil companies paid the damper to the budget was in February 2021. At that time they transferred 2.8 billion rubles. A situation with a negative damper has already occurred several times in the domestic use of this mechanism. In the case of gasoline, this happened in January and February 2019, February-December 2020 and December 2022; in the case of diesel fuel it occurred from February 2020 to January 2021.
The damper mechanism has been in effect in Russia since 2019. The budget pays the damper as a kind of subsidy to oil companies so that they restrain domestic fuel prices when export netbacks are high. If the difference between the export cost of fuel and the indicative domestic price (defined by law) is positive, meaning exports became more profitable than supplies to the domestic market, then the state pays oil companies; if the difference is negative, oil companies pay into the budget.
