RBC Daily: "Putting petrol market in manual operation"
First a petrol shortage, now the Energy Ministry wants answers from the oil industry.
Fuel distribution has been switched to manual operation. In February the government compelled the oil companies to drastically reduce retail prices. This measure led to a shortage of petrol due to a more profitable export market. Yesterday queues in the Altai Territory prompted Rosneft and Gazprom Neft to promise the Energy Ministry that they would increase fuel distribution in the region. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin intends to get to the bottom of it.
Putin's Press Secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said that yesterday the prime minister instructed all the interested departments to explain what caused the shortage of fuel in a number of regions. The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) and the Energy Ministry reacted instantly. The FAS promised to find out how "the assets of vertically integrated oil companies, oil refineries and independent filling stations could create a shortage of and sharply increase prices on motor fuel" in 20 regions. Energy Ministry Press Secretary Dmitry Klokov told RBC Daily that the ministry had established an office for the prompt responses to these cases.
Today the Energy Ministry invited oil company representatives "to analyse the state of affairs and come up with a plan to get things back to normal" in other regions. Tomorrow we will hold a teleconference with the participation of regional representatives, Klokov said.
On Monday the Altai Fuel Union reported the shortage of petrol in the region and the forced shutdown of about 300 filling stations. The crisis broke out because Rosneft and Gazprom Neft reduced oil supplies to private operators. The FAS started criminal proceedings against the companies' regional subsidiaries on charges of price collusion.
Rosneft and Gazprom Neft will increase supplies to the Altai Territory by 15% over April and May of last year. This decision was made following yesterday's conference with the Energy Ministry. Klokov said a proposal was also made to speed up exchange trade and create a fuel reserve in several major cities of the region. "There must be no restrictions on fuel at Rosneft's filling stations (previously, they limited fuel to 20 litres per capita – RBC Daily)," Klokov emphasized.
Analyst from the IFD Kapital Group, Vitaly Kryukov, noted that for the first time in the last few years exports of all oil products have become more profitable than domestic sales. "Administrative pricing regulation on the domestic market has resulted in an artificial fuel shortage," Kryukov concluded. An RBC Daily source at a vertically integrated oil company said that at yesterday's conference the Energy Ministry recommended that the oil companies not increase exports even if they are more profitable. He did not rule out that officials would start pressuring wholesalers soon.
General Director of the National Energy Security Fund, Konstantin Simonov, observed that there was panic in the Altai Territory, probably because it was rumoured that the price of petrol would be going up. "If the hysterics continue, there could be fuel shortages in Voronezh, Bryansk, St Petersburg and so forth, just as they predict," he warned. "But I still have strong doubts about this," he noted.
By tradition, the prime minister intervened and now the oil companies will be asked to increase domestic distribution. Simonov believes that the problem is due to the lack of independent oil refineries and that the well-to-filling-station process takes place within one or two companies so there is no real competition. Director of marketing and development at the Kortes Research Centre Pavel Strokov expressed this opinion: "The crisis emerged where there were many independent companies. Things will come back to normal in a couple of days. There will be no petrol lines in other regions."
Galina Starinskaya
