On 14 September the official publication portal posted decree No. 1156 of 12 September, a two-page scan we read in full. It adds one paragraph to the rules that set how much fuel a refinery must sell on the exchange. That quota is not market regulation but a tax condition: under the Tax Code, a refinery that misses it has the excise rate on its oil feedstock set to zero for that month. Off-exchange sales to owners of electricity- and heat-generating facilities now count towards the quota — and the decree reaches back to 1 July 2026, covering the already-closed months of July and August. The energy ministry must send the register of those buyers to the Federal Tax Service as well as to the competition service. Neither the government nor Minfin announced it.
What the decree does
Point 1 adds an eighth paragraph to point 4² of the Rules approved by decree No. 669 of 29 April 2021. The new category of buyer is:
“organisations owning, by right of ownership or on another lawful basis, facilities for the production of electric and (or) thermal energy (capacity) and supplying fuel to equipment intended for the production of electric energy, named in the register approved by the federal executive body performing the functions of formulating state policy and legal regulation in the fuel and energy complex.”
Point 2 gives the energy ministry 15 working days from entry into force to approve that register, in the form annexed to decree No. 1003 of 10 August 2026, and to deliver it “to the Federal Tax Service and the Federal Antimonopoly Service”. Point 3 tells the competition service to publish it on its website. Point 4 sets its reach:
“This decree enters into force on the day of its official publication and applies to legal relations arising from 1 July 2026.”
It is signed by Mikhail Mishustin. The decree amends nothing else.
Why a trading quota is a tax condition
The chain runs through the excise on oil feedstock. Point 8 of article 193 of the Tax Code reads:
“Regardless of the fulfilment of the other conditions established by this point, the excise rate on oil feedstock (A_NS) for the tax period shall be taken as equal to 0 if in that tax period at least one of the following conditions is met: […] the volume of high-octane […] motor petrol and (or) diesel fuel […] sold […] in the tax period on exchange trading conducted by an exchange (exchanges), and (or) in other cases established by the Government of the Russian Federation, turned out to be less than the minimum sale value on exchange trading […] determined by the taxpayer independently in the procedure established by the Government of the Russian Federation.”
Two phrases in that sentence are decisive. The Government sets the minimum, so the condition that activates a tax provision is fixed by decree rather than by law. And the words “and (or) in other cases established by the Government of the Russian Federation” are new: they were inserted into that paragraph by federal law No. 292-FZ of 4 August 2026, passed by the Duma on 21 July and approved by the Federation Council on 24 July. We read the law: its article 2 amends “the twenty-seventh paragraph of point 8 of article 193”, and its final article extends that amendment “to legal relations arising from 1 July 2026”. That wording is what allows sales made away from the exchange to count towards an exchange quota at all.
What a zero rate costs a refinery is visible in article 200. Its point 27 allows a deduction of “the excise amounts, multiplied by a coefficient of 2, calculated by the taxpayer” on feedstock sent for processing, “increased (decreased) by the amount K_DEMP” — the damper — “increased by the investment premium K_INV […] and decreased by the amount K_VRK”. With the rate at zero there is no accrued excise for the coefficient of 2 to double, and the reverse-excise part of that deduction collapses to nothing.
How little has to reach the exchange
Point 2 of the Rules sets the petrol minimum at 15 per cent of a refinery's monthly output — “10 per cent in the period from 1 July to 31 December 2026”. Point 3 sets diesel at 16 per cent.
Point 4², which decree 1156 extends, was itself added only on 10 August, also with effect from 1 July. It lets volumes sold under targeted exchange orders and under off-exchange contracts count towards those minimums, “but in aggregate not more than 8 percentage points and 13 percentage points” for petrol and diesel respectively — and only where the buyer is on the list. Until 12 September that list covered six buyer categories: firms named by the agriculture ministry; northern-delivery firms named by the far-east ministry; construction firms named by the building ministry; the single importer authorised under order No. 2679-r of 17 September 2022; suppliers authorised by a region's operational headquarters under decree No. 757 of 19 October 2022, if the prime minister or the relevant deputy prime minister signs off the delivery; and Russian Railways. Owners of generating facilities are the seventh.
The arithmetic is ours: of the 10 points of petrol output that must be sold this half-year, up to 8 may be sold off the exchange, leaving 2 points that have to be genuine exchange sales. For diesel, 16 less 13 leaves 3. A separate paragraph, point 4¹ of the same Rules, lets road self-pickup count for up to one percentage point more in the same July-to-December window.
The third easing in ten weeks
The Rules have been amended four times in 2026 — by decree No. 574 of 21 May, No. 825 of 2 July, No. 1003 of 10 August and now No. 1156 of 12 September. We did not read No. 574 and make no claim about what it did. The other three all have the same effect, and all three are retrospective: 825 and 1003 rewrote the quota and its exceptions with effect from 1 June and 1 July, and 1156 widens the exception again from 1 July.
Retroactivity shows what this is for. A rule applied to July and August is not about future deliveries; it is about closing tax periods that have already ended. A refinery that sold to the newly listed buyers off the exchange in those months can now count those volumes, within the 8-point cap, and close a quota it had missed. One that made no such sales gets nothing from this decree.
The background is not in the decree. On the same day the decree appeared, the government published an account of a meeting chaired by Alexander Novak on the fuel market: the competition service has “opened 55 cases, issued 83 warnings, of which 51 have been complied with”, supplies are being arranged “in manual mode” for Yekaterinburg, the Chelyabinsk, Arkhangelsk, Tver and Belgorod regions and the Perm and Krasnodar territories, and vertically integrated oil companies “are holding retail fuel prices within previously agreed parameters, close to the rate of inflation”. Output fell after attacks on refineries; the quota is a share of output; the quota became hard to meet.
This is the third fuel-market decision we have covered in three weeks, after the delay to wider diesel exports and the lowering of petrol quality classes to July 2027. It comes three days after decree 1155, which set the price at which Russia now scores its oil and gas tax breaks.
What this changes in our model
Nothing, and not because the sum is small. The Oil & gas budget revenues indicator is our second-weakest component at 14 out of 100 — real rolling twelve-month revenue at 56.9% of the 2021 total, as of July. But the line our parser reads is Minfin's single aggregate “Нефтегазовые доходы” row in its monthly execution table, which the ministry publishes without a breakdown. We checked today's file: the reverse excise and the damper are not separable in it. So we can say this decree acts on the oil and gas channel, but we cannot show its effect in our own series.
The strength index stands at 47.2 out of 100, in the stress zone, up from 46.8. Today's data update moved two of the eight components. The rolling twelve-month federal deficit went from 3.27% to 3.29% of GDP through August, which leaves its score at 65. The rolling consolidated regional balance improved from −1.616 to −1.509 trn roubles, lifting that score from 28 to 31. The verdict is unchanged: no trigger.
What we do not know
What it costs. Neither the decree nor any published commentary puts a rouble figure on the deductions this preserves for July and August. Without the energy ministry's register, which does not exist yet, and without tax service data, which is not public, the amount cannot be calculated independently.
Whether the damper itself falls away with the rate. A zero rate empties the doubled-excise term of the article 200 deduction. The damper enters the same formula as a separate addend, and we did not establish from the Code that it disappears with it. We say the reverse excise collapses; we do not say the damper does.
How many refineries missed the quota. The tax and competition services hold that figure and do not publish it; fas.gov.ru did not answer this session, so we could not check whether the register of generation owners has appeared there either.
Why there is no explanatory note. regulation.gov.ru returned nothing for this decree, and the government made no announcement of it, though it published an account of the fuel meeting the same day. The motive is reconstructed from the text and the dates, not stated anywhere.