In mid-November, shipments from the two main export terminals in Novorossiysk and Primorsk were made at prices below $40 and at an increased discount of $16-18 per barrel, RBC notes in its research.
Thus, the price of Urals oil fell below the forecasted average values for this year of $58 per barrel. However, the Russian budget will not suffer from this, RBC says. The fact is that at actual oil prices above the forecasted prices there are deductions to the reserve fund, which is spent if prices fall below the forecast. That is, we are not talking about a budget shortfall when prices fall below forecasts, but about a decrease in reserves in the special fund.
Initially, the Russian budget for 2025 included a forecast price of Urals oil at $69.7 per barrel. In April, the forecast was lowered to $56 per barrel, and in September it was adjusted to $58. In the draft budget for 2026 and subsequent years, the Urals price will decrease by one dollar and will reach $55 by 2030.
The loss of each dollar in the price of export oil leads to a shortfall in the Russian budget of 150 billion rubles a year, RBC calculated. From the beginning of this year until the end of October, the additional oil and gas revenues of the Russian budget amounted to over 200 billion rubles. The current situation with falling export prices will lead to the fact that at the end of the year, the additional oil and gas revenues of the Russian budget will drop to about 78 billion rubles.
