Russian oil companies' damper payments expected to be 1.4 trln rubles below plan in 2025, at 2.6 trln rubles - finance minister

MOSCOW. May 28 (Interfax) - The Finance Ministry anticipates a reduction in damper payments to oil companies in 2025 by 1.4 trillion rubles compared to initial budget estimates.

"For the current year, the total volume of damper payments will decrease to 2.6 trillion rubles, which is 1.4 trillion rubles less than originally planned in this year's budget. Prices have fallen, and accordingly revenues have decreased, so we will return less to oil companies," Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said during a State Duma meeting.

Responding to lawmakers' questions about potentially increasing the tax burden on the oil and gas sector, Siluanov said that the Finance Ministry currently considers the existing system of interaction with the oil industry to be balanced. "On one hand, we collect significant revenues through resource taxes, mineral extraction taxes and other taxation, while on the other hand, we regulate fuel prices in the domestic market by returning a portion of these collected taxes," he said.

"I believe that changing our established relationship with the oil industry now could pose risks to energy prices in our market, as well as to the financial stability of oil companies. This is also important for us, so I would not advocate for such radical changes at this time," he said.

Damper payments to oil companies in April amounted to 62.7 billion rubles, while in March they stood at 100.3 billion rubles. Cumulatively, damper payments for 4M totaled 467.7 billion rubles.

Oil companies received 1.815 trillion rubles from the budget through the damper mechanism in 2024, compared to 1.588 trillion rubles in 2023, 2.171 trillion rubles in 2022 and 674.5 billion rubles in 2021. In 2020, due to market conditions, oil companies paid 356.6 billion rubles into the budget under the fuel damper mechanism. In 2019, the budget returned 282.2 billion rubles to oil companies as damper payments.