The protection order covers the construction site, its water supply and the pipeline complex serving it, per Montsame's readout of Wednesday's session. Tax relief answers a risk the government named itself: delays and funding disruptions. Sitting in Dornogobi's Altanshiree soum, the plant is the country's first refinery, built on Indian credit; the readout gives no completion date.
What it is meant to end arrives, for now, on rails. The mining ministry counted 76 wagons, 4,560 tonnes of AI-92 petrol, in the 24 hours to Wednesday: 1,950 tonnes to Ulaanbaatar's 218 filling stations, 600 tonnes to the provinces.
“The refinery becomes a security object before it becomes an industrial one.”
Upstream sits the weak link. The Orsk refinery halted on 11 August for repairs of up to 6 months, more than 10 Russian regions restrict fuel sales, and Mongolia's ikon.mn relays Russian press calling the renewed limits at Moscow's own stations a second wave of the shortage.
Price data give the decision its timing. The statistics office's weekly survey to 17 August has average consumer prices down 1.6% on the week and 3.5% on the month, mutton and potatoes cheaper, while diesel and AI-92 went the other way in the aimags. The food side of the summer's price shock is easing; the fuel side is not.
The mechanism is a state buying schedule certainty. Nothing the cabinet approved on Wednesday adds a litre this year; soldiers price out physical risk, exemptions price out fiscal drag, and both work on the same variable, the date the refinery starts. The refinery becomes a security object before it becomes an industrial one.
One instrument stays unused: no session of the government's Price Council has surfaced in the wires this cycle.