Twice this autumn the Russian government postponed the day on which diesel could leave the country freely again. On 31 October it stopped postponing and repealed the exception instead. Decree No. 1436 took effect the day it was published — one day before the date the exception had last been deferred to.

In the same three lines it deleted the expiry date of a second, narrower exception, which was due to lapse on 31 October itself. Two deadlines fell on the same boundary, and the government settled them there in opposite directions: the wide channel is closed permanently, the narrow one now lives as long as the ban.

The whole decree is three amendments

The operative part of clause 1 reads, in full:

“(a) to declare subpoint ‘g’ of point 2 invalid; (b) to set out point 4 in the following wording: ‘4. This decree enters into force on 1 August 2026 and acts until 31 January 2027 inclusive.’; (c) to declare point 5 invalid.”

Clause 3 is one sentence: the decree enters into force on 31 October 2026. It is signed by Mikhail Mishustin. The document is published as a scan with no text layer; we read both pages as images in this session.

The old point 4 set the ban running from 1 August 2026 except subpoint (g), which was to start later. The old point 5 ran the ban to 31 January 2027 except subpoint (v), which was to stop earlier. The new point 4 merges both into a single sentence with no exception of either kind, and point 5 is deleted because its content has moved into point 4. Every carve-out from the ban’s own calendar is now gone.

A wide door that never opened

Decree No. 954 of 30 July 2026 banned exports of motor gasoline, diesel fuel, marine fuel and other gasoils — tariff codes 2710 12 411 0 to 2710 12 590 0 and 2710 19 421 0 to 2710 19 429 0, including volumes bought on the exchange — and carved fifteen exceptions into it, lettered (a) to (p). Two of them concern diesel, and as we set out on 30 August their scope is not the same:

Subpoint (g) was the door back to open export. It was never opened. Decree No. 954 set it to take effect on 1 September 2026; decree No. 1097 of 28 August moved that to 1 October; decree No. 1252 of 29 September moved it to 1 November. We read all four decrees in this session; the two that moved the date make two word substitutions each, one in point 4 and one in point 5. The exception was deferred twice and repealed on the last day before it would finally have operated. It did not govern a single customs declaration.

A narrow door that was due to close

The other half of the decree runs the opposite way. Subpoint (v) was the one diesel channel actually working, and point 5 gave it an end date: first 31 August 2026, then — by the same two decrees, in their second substitution each — 30 September, then 31 October. Yesterday was that date.

Instead of extending it a third time, decree No. 1436 removed the sentence that held it. With point 5 gone and the new point 4 setting no exception, the treaty channel for diesel now expires when the ban itself does, on 31 January 2027. The government also repealed subpoint (b) of clause 1 in each of the two earlier decrees — the amendments that had been rewriting that date month by month. The line was retired deliberately, not left to run out.

The effect is to align diesel with gasoline. Exception (b), the gasoline equivalent of (v), never carried a separate end date; only the diesel version did. That asymmetry is now gone.

What remains is narrower than before 31 October. Fourteen exceptions still stand, and eleven of them have published text. Of those eleven, the only route by which diesel can be sold abroad commercially is the treaty channel capped by indicative balances; one more, (b), does the same job for gasoline. The remaining nine are not commercial sales at all: humanitarian shipments, transit, ships’ stores, fuel in vehicles’ own tanks, supplies to Russian military formations abroad, supplies to Russian organisations at Baikonur, supplies to Russian organisations on Svalbard, fuel for vessels and installations under Russian exclusive jurisdiction, and fuel taken out by individuals for personal use. The last three exceptions — (n), (o) and (p) — read in their entirety “for official use only”, so three of the fourteen cannot be checked against the decree at all.

The word that is in none of the four decrees

These decisions are normally reported as an extension of the ban on diesel exports by producers. The word does not appear in any of the four acts we read. Decree No. 954 defines both diesel exceptions by a condition on the export-duty coefficient and, for the narrow one, by a quota — not by who is doing the exporting. The frame is not invented by the press, though: the government’s own announcement of the previous deferral used it, and we quoted that announcement on 30 August. It is a description of the effect, attached to a text that does not say it.

The distinction matters today because the two readings give different answers. Read as a rule about producers, this decree extends something. Read as it is written, it abolishes one exception and makes another permanent for the ban’s remaining three months — and the thing abolished had never taken effect, so nothing that was happening on 30 October stopped happening on 31 October. What changed is the future the earlier decrees had scheduled.

Why a fuel decision reaches the budget at all

Fuel that stays home earns no export revenue. It also acts on domestic prices, and domestic prices set the damper — the payment to refiners that appears as a negative line inside the monthly oil and gas revenue figure. We took that line apart on 25 August: it shrinks as domestic prices rise toward their thresholds and reaches zero once they cross them. So the two channels pull against each other. Less fuel sold abroad is less export base; higher prices at home are a smaller subsidy paid out. Which one dominates is not visible in this text, and we are not going to guess it: our guide to oil and gas revenue explains how that net figure is assembled, and Minfin’s monthly file is what settles it.

What the decree does say about motive it says only in the base act. Decree No. 954 opens by citing articles 29 and 47 of the Eurasian Economic Union treaty, annex No. 7 to it, article 21 of the foreign-trade law, and the aim of “ensuring the energy security of the Russian Federation”. Decree No. 1436 has no preamble of its own — no stated reason, no financial justification, nothing between the title and the word resolves.

The domestic background is not in the document either, but it is on the record. Ryazan oblast rationed petrol by the last digit of the number plate for 56 days from late August, suspending the regime on 24 October with no stated reason. A government that had been taking this decision one month at a time has now written it down for three.

What it means for our model

Oil and gas budget revenue scores 10 out of 100, the second-worst of the eight indicators. The reading behind that score is for September and did not change today: real revenue over the rolling twelve months stands at 54.9% of the 2021 level, measured against anchors of 100 for the 2021 total in 2021 prices and 0 for half of it. The strength index is 46 of 100, in the stress zone, where it stood yesterday.

This decree moves none of that now. It sets no volumes, transfers no money and names no sum. It belongs to the indicator the way the August decree did: through the damper and the export base, with a lag, and through what it reveals about how far ahead the government is willing to commit. In August it committed for one month, two days before the deadline. This time it committed to the end of January.

What we do not know

The volumes. How much diesel left through the treaty channel, and how much would have left through the wide one, is not published; the indicative balances under intergovernmental agreements are not public. Since September the relevant series are harder to reach in principle too — a decree restricted company export and refinery data and barred its republication.

Whether the ban ends on 31 January. The decree fixes that date and removes the machinery for monthly adjustment, which is not the same as a commitment. The same government has amended this act three times in three months.

What the ministries say. Nothing, so far as we can see. The energy ministry’s site returned HTTP 403 to our checks this morning, government.ru did not answer at all, and Minfin has been unreachable for a seventh day. We found no retelling of this decree anywhere at the time of writing; searches return the September deferral.

What the three secret exceptions permit. Unchanged from August: subpoints (n), (o) and (p) have no public text, and decree No. 1436 does not touch them.