The arithmetic is the ministry's own, given to the outlet ikon on Thursday afternoon. On petrol, the gap between ordered and landed is 23,780 tons, 32% of the book, with most of it promised by Monday's month-end. On diesel the ledger is fuller: 82% of the contracted volume is in the country.
“The Price Council has not met in anything the wires carry”
The answer points east. The ministry is working to raise China-sourced volumes and to upgrade throughput at the border ports, the state secretary said. That is the direction the whole crisis has pushed: Russia's petrol export ban runs to January 2027, and the ministry reported earlier that a 25,000-ton slice of a Russian commitment was being covered with third-country product.
Two instruments the government named in the crisis's first weeks stay unused. The Price Council has not met, by anything the wires have carried since mid-August; and the September book, as the ministry had published it by midweek, carried petrol and jet lines and no diesel line.
Rationing ended in mid-August. What the August ledger shows is the other half of that story: a third of the petrol book is still expected rather than landed.