Russian government taking measures to prevent violations in exports of petroleum products

MOSCOW. June 29 (Interfax) - The Russian government is strengthening measures to combat so-called gray exports of fuel, when petroleum products purchased on the domestic market and for which a fuel damper has been paid from the country's budget are exported outside Russia.

Government decree No. 1032, aimed, among other things, against inaccurate declaration of exports of oil products, has been published. It will enter into force on July 1, 2023.

As was reported earlier, starting from January 1, 2023, an additional payment in the amount of 20,000 rubles/tonne will be added to the export duty on gasoline and diesel fuel if the exporter is not the producer of the commodity. At the same time, the operations of commission agents in fuel export transactions is permitted.

The new government decree is designed to stop the use of fictitious contracts and abuses in the export of fuel.

As such, the number of certificates that allow exports of fuel with a regular duty has been reduced. Now petroleum products can be exported from Russia only by those participants of foreign economic activity who received a certificate of registration of an entity carrying out operations with crude oil refining or a certificate of registration of an entity carrying out operations with straight-run gasoline.

Previously, in order not to increase the export duty, it was also possible to provide a certificate of registration of an entity engaged in operations with benzene, paraxylene or orthoxylene, or a certificate of registration of an entity engaged in medium distillate refining operations, or a registration certificate of an entity engaged in ethane refining operations, or a registration certificate of an entity engaged in liquefied petroleum gas refining operations.

Furthermore, in order to confirm actual operations, in 2022 at least 50,000 tonnes of oil products must have been exported from Russia, including outside the customs territory of the Eurasian Economic Union.

It was necessary to obtain such a certificate before January 1, 2023 (or after that date, but only if a similar previous certificate was revoked).

The export duty on refined products is calculated as the export duty on crude oil multiplied by a certain coefficient. Until June 1, 2023 the export duty rate on a number of petroleum products was equal to the export duty on crude oil; the new decree extends this measure until the end of this year.