The week ran downhill from Tuesday's high. On the national index, which weights all the large refineries, AI-92 rose 4.03% on 1 September to 73,102, gave back 1.37% on Wednesday, then lost 4.38% on Thursday and 0.2% on Friday. AI-95 ended at 73,139, 2.78% down on the week. Diesel fell in each of the four sessions from Tuesday, by 2.54%, 2.59%, 3% and 0.59%, for 8.76% on the week. Lenta adds the usual caveat, that the exchange handles about a tenth of daily consumption, and the retail figure that goes with it: Rosstat's pump prices rose about 0.9% in the same week, and 12 oil companies, Lenta reports, have signed agreements to hold station prices to inflation.
Two decisions sit behind the diesel line. On 29 August the government extended the producers' diesel export ban to 30 September, and at the Eastern Economic Forum Alexander Novak said exports would reopen as stocks form: if the stocks needed to prevent oversupply are in place, he said, the decision to open exports will naturally be taken; for now the energy ministry, watching the balance, considers it expedient not to export. The condition puts stocks before exports, and a producer that cannot ship sells at home.
Bishkek met on fuel the same day. Erlist Akunbekov chaired a cabinet meeting on fuel supply with the energy ministry, ABank and the importers, 24.kg reports; the instructions given were not disclosed. The line 24.kg carries from first deputy chairman Daniyar Amangeldiev is that for now there are no forecasts of a rise in fuel prices, and that on the whole everything will depend on the market.
The condition puts stocks before exports, and a producer that cannot ship sells at home.
For Dushanbe the exchange is the reference for most of what it imports: 91% of the first-half book came from Russia. Tajikistan's first-half petrol came in at $807 a tonne and its diesel at $789, by the customs book Asia-Plus printed on Wednesday; Friday's exchange prints are $792 and $790 before freight. A country whose wall is a fixed dollar price, as Kyrgyzstan's is, now buys $168 under it before freight. A country with no wall buys at the price the exchange sets and adds the wagon.
Kyrgyzstan's decree 579 sets the compensation as the difference between the fixed price and the contract cost, as Economist.kg described it; what happens when the contract cost runs under the fixed price is the document's unpublished half. August's claims are due by 25 September. September's, at Friday's prices, would be the first for which the question stops being academic.