In July, oil and gas revenue in Russia’s budget came to 934 bn roubles, against 787.3 bn a year earlier — up 18.6%. The figure looks like a recovery. Buried inside it is a line that tells a different story.
The subsidy deducted from revenue
Minfin’s monthly oil and gas revenue file includes a component called `Kdemp` — the damper payment to refiners for selling fuel at home below export parity. It appears as a separate negative line within oil and gas revenue. The published total is therefore what remains after the payment.
July’s figures:
- July 2025: revenue 787.3 bn, damper −59.9 within it
- June 2026: revenue 683.6 bn, damper −210.6
- July 2026: revenue 934.0 bn, damper −113.0
Two different stories, easily confused
Year on year, the damper grew from 59.9 to 113 bn, making the deduction 53.1 bn larger. Before the damper, revenue rose from 847.2 to 1,047 bn — 23.6%. After it, the rise was 18.6%. The subsidy absorbed a third of the increase.
Month on month, the damper almost halved, from 210.6 in June to 113 in July. Revenue rose by 250.4 bn over the same month, and 97.6 of that came simply from the smaller payment — 39% of the monthly increase.
Both facts are true, but they describe different comparisons. “The revenue rise is a saved subsidy” holds for the month, not the year: over the year, the subsidy reduced revenue rather than boosting it.
What our indicator reads
Neither. Our oil and gas indicator measures the level against 2021, not the rate against last year: 57% of the pre-war level in real terms, scoring 14 out of 100 against a trouble line at 50%. That is the second-worst of the eight.
This is exactly why we measure a level. Last July was already depressed, so a rise against it says nothing about whether the state is any better able to pay. The level says it is close to its historic low. The rest of the indicators are on the monitor.
What remains unknown
Why the damper halved in a month. The formula is tied to exchange prices, and the payment falls to zero once a price clears its threshold — but the published data cannot separate the effect of prices from that of physically disrupted refining.
Nor do we know whether an import damper reaches this same line. The law of 4 August 2026 extended the mechanism to imported diesel, and only for as long as a government ban on exporting diesel and middle distillates stands. Its text is posted on the official portal as a scanned PDF with no text layer, so we could not read how the payment is booked, and the footnotes to Minfin's file explain only the difference between cash and accrued reimbursement.