Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
Moscow has been drip-feeding less and less about its oil sector since the war began, and this week the tap tightened again.
Russia’s federal statistics service Rosstat quietly stopped publishing crude oil production figures in 2023 and gasoline production figures in 2024.
What remained visible was mostly the export side: who was buying, on what routes, through which terminals. That window is now closing.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, September 28, signed a decree restricting access to information on Russia’s oil refineries and energy exports, the Kyiv Independent reported.
The order covers volumes of crude processed at individual refineries and the petroleum products they turn out, along with export contract details including volumes, prices, sellers and buyers, carriers, insurers, maritime transport used, loading terminals and payment settlements.
The Kremlin cast the move as a response to “the unfriendly and internationally illegal actions of the United States” and allied states, according to Bloomberg.
The Russian government has ten days to draw up the specific list of goods that fall under the restriction.
Signed as Ukraine claims 45% of refining is down
The timing places the decree at the tail end of the most damaging month yet for Russia’s refining sector.
Ukraine’s General Staff said on September 21 that “more than 45% of the design capacity of Russia’s oil refining industry” had been disabled following long-range strikes on the Syzran refinery in Samara Oblast on the night of September 14-15, the Slavneft-YANOS plant in Yaroslavl on the night of September 16-17, and Gazprom’s Moscow oil refinery on September 20, according to Interfax-Ukraine.
Kyiv frames the campaign as lawful self-defense. Striking such sites is “Ukraine’s exercise of its inherent right to self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter,” the General Staff said in the same statement. The figure has not been independently verified.
In the same military update carried by Ukrainska Pravda, the General Staff said one consequence inside Russia has been “a sharp decline in the production of Euro-5/K5 standard petrol and diesel”, the higher-grade road fuels sold on the domestic market.
What the decree hides from sanctions monitors
The independent Russian-language outlet Meduza, whose newsroom operates in exile in Latvia, described the order as banning online publication of fuel and energy sector operational information, including export deal details, contract parties and volumes.
Only information that energy companies themselves choose to disclose is exempt, and, as Russian business outlet The Bell noted, cited by Meduza, the decree sets no penalties for violations.
For sanctions enforcement, the practical effect is that the data governments and researchers use to track Russian oil flows and flag price cap or embargo evasion is being pulled off the public record.
Limiting the release of “export volumes, buyers, transport routes and terminals,” the Kyiv Independent noted, can make it harder for outside monitors to identify possible sanctions evasion.
Russia’s refining output had already fallen to a roughly 20-year low by various estimates in 2026, tied to the drone campaign. The government’s ten-day window to specify the restricted goods list runs to October 8.
