The Russian Finance Ministry will study the representativeness of the Russian oil indicators proposed by the St. Petersburg Mercantile Exchange. This was announced by Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Sazanov, according to the PRIME news agency. According to him, the Ministry is ready to discuss the transition to these indicators for the calculation of taxes and export duties.

The international pricing agency Argus in October launched a new system for assessing the price of Russian Urals crude oil on a fob basis in Russian ports, as the previous one in Europe became irrelevant due to the entry into force of the EU embargo. Now the Ministry of Finance applies the cif quotation in North-Western Europe and the Mediterranean to calculate the export duty on oil and taxes on its production. In essence, in general terms, this is a price that includes transportation costs paid by the seller, as opposed to fob, when the buyer pays.

According to Sazonov, in 2023, the Ministry of Finance will continue to use the existing Urals crude oil quotation in calculating export duty and taxes on crude production, but in the first quarter will consider the feasibility of switching to other quotations.