Moscow

Moscow widened its Diesel Export Ban to cover producers as well as traders on 8 July, a tightening that landed the same day the European diesel refining margin hit a record $60.17 a barrel; Russian seaborne diesel exports had already fallen 39% in June before the ban formalised the drop.

The 31 July Deadline this desk had modelled for that ban to lapse passed on 25 July with Novak instead citing an unspecified market-recovery signal, and the parallel gasoline ban was pushed out to end-2026. Moscow is choosing to keep the export restriction open-ended rather than accept the fuel-shortage domestic politics of lifting it, even as the policy props up the margin its own crude no longer earns.

Russia's federal budget assumes a $59-a-barrel Urals price; on 6 July Urals held near $51.25, roughly $20 below Brent and further below Moscow's own fiscal benchmark than the $10-15 gap of the past two years. A week later the crude was still stuck in the high-$40s to mid-$50s, with one tracker reading $48.95 while Brent climbed roughly $6 over the same run, widening the gap Moscow has to fund against rather than closing it.

The squeeze is arriving without any single new sanctions trigger: Urals had been trading $11-22 above the EU's $44.10 price cap only weeks earlier, so the fall to the high-$40s reflects the broader crude sell-off pulling Brent down as much as enforcement.