What counts as oil and gas revenue
Russia's finance ministry splits federal revenue into two blocks: oil and gas revenue, and non-oil-and-gas revenue. The first covers the taxes and duties the state levies on oil and gas; the second is everything else, from VAT to profit tax to dividends. The split matters because oil and gas revenue is directly exposed to world energy markets and sanctions.
The ministry publishes the oil and gas figures every month in its federal budget data, component by component. The published total is a net figure. Among its components is a negative line, the damper: payments to refiners for selling fuel at home below export parity. When the damper grows, the reported revenue falls even if the taxes collected did not. Our reading of the July 2026 file shows how much that can change a comparison.
Single months are lumpy for a second reason. The tax on additional income from hydrocarbon extraction is paid once a quarter, so a payment month and the months around it can differ sharply without anything happening in the oil market.
The budget rule: base volume and the rest
Oil and gas revenue does not all flow straight into spending. Under the budget rule, the budget counts on a base volume of oil and gas revenue, calculated at a base oil price set in the Budget Code. Revenue above the base is additional revenue, which the finance ministry uses to buy foreign currency and gold for the National Wealth Fund. When revenue falls short of the base, the ministry sells instead. The amount for each month is not set from revenue already received: it is the ministry's forecast of additional revenue for the current month, plus a correction for the gap between what the previous month actually brought in and what had been expected. The ministry announces each month's operation in a short release; the release of 3 September 2026 is one example.
The base price itself is a policy choice. In August 2026 the ministry conceded in writing, for the first time, that its planned path, cutting the base price by one dollar a barrel a year to $55 by 2030, would not be enough; our account quotes its words. The rule can also be suspended: its suspension in March and April 2026 is recorded in the central bank's monetary policy guidelines draft.
How this monitor measures it
The monitor takes the ministry's cumulative figures, turns them into single months, converts each month into 2021 prices with Rosstat's consumer price index and adds up the latest twelve. The result is the real oil and gas revenue of the past year, in the prices of the last full year before the war.
That total is read against 2021, when real oil and gas revenue came to ₽9,027 billion. The 2021 level is worth 100 on the monitor's scale; half of it, the registered trouble line, is worth 0; why those two points were chosen is set out on the methodology page. The monitor puts this revenue in class 2, alongside the liquid reserve fund: a state-published series, but one whose collapse the state could not paper over. Past its line, the series triggers a verdict only if another class-2 indicator is past its own line at the same time.
Why a level and not a growth rate
Comparing a month of oil and gas revenue with the same month a year earlier answers only one question: better or worse than last year? If last year was bad, a rise says nothing about whether the budget is back where it was before the war.
The monitor itself used to read the year-on-year rate. On 19 August 2026 it switched to the real level against 2021, and three days later its trouble line followed: the line is now half the pre-war real level, not a fall on the year. Both changes are dated in the amendment record. A single month shows why. In July 2026 oil and gas revenue was 18.6% higher than a year earlier, which reads like a recovery. The real twelve-month level, meanwhile, stood close to its lowest point in the series.
What the series has shown
The level has moved a long way in both directions. When the war began, the real twelve-month total was already slightly above its 2021 level; the first months of the war then brought a windfall that lifted it to its highest point, in May 2022, at 120.5% of the 2021 level. From spring 2023 it mostly stayed below 90% of that level. The exception was a recovery during 2024 that, for a few months in the middle of the year, brought it back to around the 2021 level. By April 2026 it had fallen to 54%. The live reading below shows where it stands now.
The monthly nominal figures tell a similar story in the ministry's own workbook. January 2026, at ₽393.3 billion, was the weakest single month since 2021, as our reading of the budget-rule workbook found.
What a weaker reading sets off
When oil and gas revenue falls, the rest of the budget does not automatically shrink with it. Any resulting gap shows up first in the budget deficit, and once revenue drops below the base, the budget rule turns from buying currency and gold to selling them. That is why the monitor calls this indicator the driver: it is where strain enters the chain. How the rest of the chain absorbs it, through borrowing, the reserve fund and eventually money and prices, is set out in how Russia finances the war.
What the number cannot tell you
The total mixes several forces: prices, output, the exchange rate and refunds such as the damper. The ministry's monthly release gives one deviation from its forecast, not a breakdown into those causes, and the monitor does not invent one. A weaker reading says that the budget is getting less from oil and gas in real terms; it does not say which of those forces was responsible, or whether the change will last.
The figure under this guide
What follows is the most recent twelve-month real oil and gas revenue as a share of 2021, and its score, where the 2021 level is 100 and half of it is 0. Each new month of revenue data from the ministry updates it.