Fuel damper payments to Russian oil cos more than halve to 881.8 bln rubles in 2025

MOSCOW. Jan 15 (Interfax) - Russian oil companies received 881.8 billion rubles in fuel damper payments from the budget in 2025, according to information on the formation and use of the federal budget's windfall oil and gas revenues, posted on the Finance Ministry's website.

This was less than half the 1.815 trillion rubles they received in 2024.

December payments fell to 57.8 billion rubles, from 64.7 billion rubles in November.

In accordance with tax legislation, damper payments are rendered for the previous month, meaning that payments were remitted in November for October and in December for November.

Oil companies received 1.588 trillion rubles from the budget through the damper mechanism in 2023, 2.171 trillion rubles in 2022 and 674.5 billion rubles in 2021. In 2020, due to market conditions, oil companies contributed 356.6 billion rubles to the budget under the fuel damper. In 2019, the budget refunded 282.2 billion rubles to oil companies through the damper.

The budget pays the damper as a subsidy to oil companies to keep domestic fuel prices down amid high export netbacks.