The Russian government may raise taxes on its main source of revenue — crude producers — to narrow its budget deficit next year, two people with knowledge of the matter said Friday. The authorities in Moscow have started discussions with companies about changing a crude-extraction tax formula, one of the people said. Both asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public yet. Modifications are also possible in the export duty formula, the news service Interfax reported, citing an unidentified person familiar with the situation. Together with the extraction levy, that would raise the tax burden on oil producers by about 600 billion rubles ($9.04 billion), according to Interfax. “The producers haven’t been impacted by the drop in prices while the government take has fallen a great deal,” said Sarah Emerson, managing director of ESAI Energy Inc., a consulting company in Wakefield, Massachusetts. “We won’t know if there […]