The July resolution banned exports of oil and petroleum products by road and rail until the domestic market is fully supplied or until the Eurasian Economic Union's common oil and petroleum-product markets start, with fuel in vehicle tanks exempt. It covered heading 2710: petrol, diesel, heating oil, kerosene, gas oil and naphtha. The amendment reported on Friday, signed by cabinet chairman Adylbek Kasymaliev, adds heading 2711, petroleum gases and other gaseous hydrocarbons with LPG and natural gas among them, and heading 2901, the acyclic hydrocarbons.
Exceptions were rewritten at the same time. Naphtha, fuel oil and heating oil may be taken outside the union's customs territory for processing with the energy ministry's permission, on condition that the products come back to Kyrgyzstan, under a methodology approved by the cabinet. Lubricating oils, hydraulic fluids and other lubricants named in the resolution leave the ban if they are not to be used as motor fuel.
One exception carries a company's name. Heating oil produced by the Chinese-owned refinery at Kara-Balta may be exported in a volume of no more than 4,800 tonnes; the economy ministry is to notify the World Trade Organization and the Eurasian Economic Commission of the changes, and the resolution takes effect 3 days after signing.
LPG is priced already. The agreed retail maximum of 3 September puts it at 48.80 som a litre beside petrol at 87.90 and diesel at 99.90. Resolution 579's import references carry LPG at $650 a tonne, with compensation from the budget for the difference to the contract cost. Heading 2711 is also the code Washington's new tariff law uses to count Russian gas, which is where Kyrgyzstan's neighbours meet it this week.
One exception carries a company's name.
Retail motor-fuel sales fell 12% year on year in August, on the statistics committee's January to August trade release, while the wall of subsidies runs to 31 December. The amendment brings the third product of resolution 579 under the same export rule as the first two, and names the one refinery whose heating oil may still go.