Due to the oil price crash and the nature of Russia’s tax system, the budget of the Russian Federation is set to suffer from low oil revenues despite Sunday’s OPEC+ agreement for a massive collective production cut of nearly 10 million bpd. Due to the monthly recalculation of Russia’s oil export duty based on the average price of its key export grade, Urals , for the previous month, Russia’s oil export duty in May is about to be 87 percent lower than in April, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. According to Bloomberg estimates on data from the Russian finance ministry, Moscow would be getting less than US$1 out of each barrel of Urals it exports. This ultra-low oil export duty is the lowest in 18 years—since 2002–when the export duty mechanism was introduced, a finance ministry official told Bloomberg. The price of Urals averaged around US$19 a barrel between the […]