Russia’s economy has taken another disastrous blow as petrol production and exports tank. Vladimir Putin’s country significantly cut its seaborne petrol exports last month, slashing them by nearly half year-on-year. In May, Russia exported 133,000 tonnes of petrol by sea, according to the Price Index Centre – 63% less than the previous month and 47% less than May 2024.
This issue has been exacerbated by ongoing repairs at major refineries, suhc as Komsomolsk, Ufa, and Volgograd. These alone have cost Moscow 72,000 tonnes of gasoline production. Despite the overall decline, exports to Africa increased to 90,000 tonnes in May – 17% more than in April and 90% more than May 2024.
Russian oil also took a staggering £3 billion hit in the first three months of 2025 as the country’s most vital export is hammered.
A combination of sanctions, slowing global demand, and internal financial decline continue to hit the Russian oil industry.
From January to March this year, the industry reported a loss of $4 billion (£2.9 billion) compared to a $4 billion profit last year, according to the Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security of Ukraine.
One of Russia’s most significant oil giants, Surgutneftegas, saw its worst result in decades, reporting a 264% loss in net profit compared to the first quarter of 2024.
At the end of 2023, the firm reportedly held 5.9 trillion rubles (£55 billion) in liquid assets, but some Russian analysts said it could have been as high as 6.5 trillion rubles (£51 billion).
Another one of the country’s biggest oil companies, Gazpromneft, suffered profit losses of 158%.
In the first quarter of 2025, it lost 21.3 billion rubles (£200 million) compared to a profit of 36.9 billion rubles (£347 million) a year ago. This comes amid a 5% drop in revenue and a 6.8% increase in production costs.