17APR

Budget revenue rises as oil and gas receipts fall

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12:44UTC

Russia's Finance Ministry reported 25.93tn roubles of federal budget revenue for January to August, up 9.2% year on year. Oil and gas revenue fell 16.7% over the same period.

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Key takeaway

Budget revenue rose 9.2% on non-oil receipts while oil and gas income fell 16.7%.

Russia's Ministry of Finance reported federal budget revenue of 25.93tn roubles for January to August, up 9.2% year on year, with oil and gas revenue down 16.7% to roughly 5.02tn roubles. Non-oil-and-gas receipts rose 18.1% and carried the whole increase. The ministry said it is drawing on the National Wealth Fund, the sovereign reserve built from past oil windfalls, to hold the budget steady.

The deficit moved the other way. Anadolu Agency put the January to July federal deficit at 6.46tn roubles, more than 32% above a year earlier, against the 5.7tn roubles half-year figure Sberbank put on the record in July. Russia's largest lender said then that it can no longer buy government bonds, which leaves a deficit of that size to be financed by a banking system that has named its own limit. Russia posted a June budget surplus two months before that.

Import figures show where the refinery damage lands. Russia bought a record 172,000 tonnes of fuel in August, more than seven times the previous monthly high, including petrol refined in India from Russian crude and sold back. The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air separately estimates the Hormuz price spike handed Russia around €31bn in extra export revenue over six months, a windfall from a war Moscow never fought.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Russia's government collected more money overall this year, but not from oil and gas, which is normally its biggest earner. Oil and gas income fell by nearly a sixth. The rest of the rise came from other taxes, and the government is dipping into its savings fund to cover a deficit that is a third bigger than last year.

Sources:Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air·Xinhua·Anadolu Agency

Mentions:Russia →India →Russian Finance Ministry →UK National Wealth Fund →Sberbank →CREA →Ukraine →Moscow →Anadolu Agency →

First Reported In

Update #27 · Russia's rate hold names the fuel shortage

Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air· 13 Sept 2026

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Causes and effects

This Event

Budget revenue rises as oil and gas receipts fall

The headline rise came entirely from non-oil receipts, up 18.1%, while the ministry drew on the National Wealth Fund to hold the budget steady. Ukraine's campaign is squeezing one revenue stream, not the whole budget.

Led to

Russia plans record 17.1tn for defence

January-September figures extended the fall in oil and gas revenue reported for January-August.

Occurred 30 Sept 2026

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Different Perspectives

Cross-border power traders

The France-Germany day-ahead spread flipped from a EUR 17.20 German premium on 1 August to a EUR 4.15 French premium on 3 August, the same day French curtailment peaked. They cannot yet attribute the flip to curtailment alone, since a like-for-like overnight comparison shows French nuclear output rising while wind fell and demand returned on the weekday step.

EDF

River-cooling limits took 7.6 GW, 12 per cent of its fleet, offline on 3 August, the highest curtailment since the heatwave began, with an easing forecast to 4.3 GW on 4 August and 3 GW after. It manages the cut as a recurring seasonal constraint, expecting it to lift with river temperature, not repair.

Gasunie

TTF, the Dutch hub it operates, drifted to roughly EUR 55 to 58 per MWh across the window, staying inside its recent range through both the German spark reversal and the French curtailment. It reads a flat hub price as evidence that neither event this window carried enough weight to move the fuel leg on its own.

German gas-fired generators

Record German solar of 18,761 MW on 2 August pushed the clean spark spread to minus 18.48 EUR/MWh, a loss-making day, before it returned to plus 16.20 on 3 August. They now price dispatch against post-solar residual load rather than wind alone, since the sign flipped inside 48 hours on unchanged fuel and carbon costs.

European Commission (DG Energy)

Its implementing-measures register logged transposition notices from only Portugal and Slovakia against Wednesday's Article 94 deadline for Directive (EU) 2024/1788, with 25 states silent. It expects the register to fill only gradually, since filing routinely lags legislating and any infringement track against non-notifying states runs on a slower clock than the deadline itself.

Spain's LNG terminal operators

Spain's 9,145 GWh terminal inventory is the largest single stock in the EU LNG network, an option value that can reroute cargoes wherever the winter strip pays best rather than a cavern gas obligation tied to a fixed date. That flexibility matters more as Germany's cavern shortfall pushes more of the winter security question onto import infrastructure.

Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Editorial standards.