The price of a litre of AI-92 in the region starts in one place. The St Petersburg exchange's national index for AI-92 closed at 68,805 roubles a tonne on 4 September, $792 at the Russian central bank's rate of 86.89 that day. Summer diesel closed at 68,610, down 8.8% in the week Russia's producers were locked out of the export market. Moscow's decisions on the table that week were the same for every buyer: petrol exports banned for everyone to 31 January 2027, diesel banned for non-producers to the same date and for producers to 30 September, jet fuel to 30 November, an exemption for intergovernmental agreements, and, from 1 September, a permit for Russian stations to sell Euro-2, Euro-3 and Euro-4 fuel until 30 June 2027.
What that tonne costs at the pump in Bishkek, Dushanbe, Tashkent, Almaty, Ashgabat or Ulaanbaatar is decided by six different machines. The desk set out to map them because the region's fuel story is written as a chronicle of prices, and prices are outputs. The inputs are instruments: a decree with three dollar figures in it, a moratorium with an end date, a headquarters that allocates tonnes, a customs book, an exchange screen, and two exchange rates for one manat.
One correction to the desk's own shelf comes first. The Kazakh machine the desk expected to find, a damper paying refineries the gap between the domestic and the export price, is not on the record. What is on the record is a corridor and a calendar.
Kazakhstan: the corridor and the calendar
Kazakhstan ended state regulation of AI-92 and diesel prices in January 2025. On 16 October 2025 the government imposed a moratorium on price rises for the two fuels, to 31 March 2026, and let it lapse on schedule. During the moratorium the Ministry of Energy published a corridor of retail prices and monitored the chains against it: in March 2026 the corridor for AI-92 ran from 213 to 239 tenge a litre and for diesel from 317 to 337, and the ministry's January monitoring found the big chains inside it, with no rise recorded. On the end of the moratorium the ministry promised that the transition to market pricing would be conducted smoothly; its vice-minister Yerlan Akbarov put it as a probability that prices would rise gradually.
The calendar did what the corridor allowed. In Astana a litre of AI-92 cost 202 to 205 tenge on the day regulation ended in January 2025 and 237 tenge in March 2026, a rise of 15% to 17%; Almaty went from 205 to 239. Kursiv counted two increases in two weeks at the start of June and another for AI-92 in mid-August, still below the neighbours' prices. A GlobalPetrolPrices ranking, as Chronicles of Turkmenistan relayed it in July, had Kazakh AI-95 at 322 tenge, $0.68 a litre, against about 89 som ($1.02) in Kyrgyzstan, more than 16,100 soums ($1.34) in Uzbekistan, 13 somoni ($1.40) in Tajikistan and 1.5 manat in Turkmenistan. The desk did not obtain a September print of the corridor.
The corridor has a price of its own, and a Kurultai deputy priced it on Thursday. Askhat Rakhimzhanov sent prime minister Olzhas Bektenov a request for a mechanism to compensate owners of cars damaged by bad fuel: repairs, he wrote, run to 200,000 to 600,000 tenge in some cases; the technical regulation committee had found petrol sold as AI-100 in Almaty with a sulphur content more than three times the limit, and AI-92 sold as AI-95 in Kyzylorda region. The committee for consumer protection answered that a consumer may claim damages once it is confirmed that the fuel's defects caused the harm, and that the causal link has to be proven. An expert Tengrinews quoted in March, Aleksei Alekseyev, gave the other half of the mechanism: diesel was raised in step with Russia, because at the old price Kazakh diesel would have flowed across the border.
The case for the corridor is the one the expert made in the same breath: Kazakhstan keeps one of the world's lowest AI-92 prices, and holding it is a lever against inflation, which printed at 9.8% in August. The case against it is in the deputy's figures and in the expert's own aside that the neighbours feed on Kazakhstan's cheap petrol; the quality of what stays is a matter for the courts. Neither side sets the price. A ministry that no longer regulates it publishes the corridor, and the chains price inside it.
What is on the record is a corridor and a calendar.
Kyrgyzstan: the dollar wall
Bishkek wrote the import side of its machine down in one decree. Cabinet resolution №579 of 26 August fixes reference import prices in dollars, $960 a tonne for AI-92, $1,050 for diesel and $650 for automotive LPG, and pays importers the difference between the fixed price and the actual cost of the fuel they bring in, on claims filed by the 25th of the month after delivery, until 31 December. It replaced a schedule that had run since late May at $860, $940, $950 and $575, under which, the traders' association said in early July, no company had yet received a som. By 19 August, the antimonopoly service said, about 1 billion som of subsidies had been paid.
The wall has a second face at the pump. A cabinet resolution of 25 May, №369, brought in temporary state regulation of retail prices, with caps of 79.90 som a litre for AI-92, 93.90 for diesel and 45.80 for autogas in June; a second resolution of 7 July, №464, replaced the caps with price agreements between the state and the traders, and by 3 September the agreed maximums stood at 87.90, 99.90 and 48.80, which is what economist.kg found at the pumps in Bishkek that day. Subsidies to the traders and deferred excise deadlines complete the set, in the antimonopoly service's own description of the regime.
The wall stands above the exchange. At the 4 September print the Russian AI-92 tonne cost $792 and diesel $790 before freight; the Kyrgyz references sit $168 and $260 above them. What the formula does when the contract cost runs under the fixed price is not published, and the desk has held that question open since the decree appeared. What the wall has done at the pump is measurable. The national statistics committee's August print put AI-92 at 89.11 som a litre, up 1.46% on July and 16.58% since January; AI-95 at 109.27, up 0.53% and 33.58%; diesel at 101.69, down 0.17% on the month and up 25.22% on the year. 24.kg's series runs from 30 December to 2 September: AI-92 from 75.9 to 87.9 som, AI-95 from 81.4 to 109.9, diesel from 80.9 to 99.9.
The budget's side of the wall is also on the record. By 24.kg's account every million litres of AI-92 costs the compensation line 23.1 million to 30.1 million som, and every million litres of diesel 25.1 million to 37.1 million. The supply behind the wall has changed shape in the same months: KazTransOil moved 35,000 tonnes of crude to Kyrgyzstan in August by trunk line to the Shagyr loading point, the first such transit in its record, Russian crude according to Reuters, for a consignee no outlet has named; domestic refinery output of petrol and diesel reached 258,242 tonnes in the first half, up 89% and 85%, about a quarter of the country's consumption of roughly 2 million tonnes of all products at that pace; China's ambassador said on Wednesday that deliveries of jet fuel and diesel had begun a month earlier, without figures.
In the wall's favour stands the August print: a month of rises below 2% in a region where Dushanbe's diesel rose by half. Against it stands the arithmetic of the line and its date. The wall ends on 31 December, the first claims under it fall due on 25 September, and the Russian doors it was built against close and open on their own calendar. Who sets the price in Kyrgyzstan is, for now, the cabinet, in dollars, with the budget as the buyer of the difference.
Mongolia: the council that does not meet and the headquarters that does
Mongolia has a Price Council for fuel that, by the desk's record, has not convened in this cycle, and a fuel headquarters that meets constantly. The headquarters, chaired by the state secretary of the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources, Buriad Dashpurev, does not set prices. It counts tonnes and allocates them. Its August book closed 8.4% short on petrol, 68,502 tonnes received against 74,780 ordered, and in full on diesel at 158,530; its first bulletin of September logged 19,853 tonnes of AI-92 across the border in the month's first week, queues averaging 54 cars and reaching 105 in Bayan-Ulgii, and an instruction to lift supply and reserves in the crop regions. On 30 August 200 of 365 rural stations were working normally.
The regulated price of ordinary AI-92 stood at 3,040 tugrik a litre in mid-August by the ministry's own figure; the Euro-grade petrol sold at the same pumps runs on a separate retail series the desk does not fold into it. What holds the regulated price is a customs decision, zero duties on fuel imports to 1 February 2027, and the allocation of the tonnes that arrive. The council has had no recorded part in it.
The price's future is being written elsewhere. On Thursday the ministry published its own text of the meeting between minister Gongoryn Damdinnyam and CNPC's general director Zhou Xinhuai: 10,000 tonnes of petrol, 4,000 of jet fuel and 3,000 of diesel for September, a request for a further 5,000 tonnes of AI-92 and 20,000 to 30,000 of diesel this month and 10,000 and 30,000 to 40,000 in October to which CNPC said it would respond favourably, and a long-term contract to be written with a transparent, fair and understandable price formula. In August prime minister Uchral had asked PetroChina's Daqing Tamsag unit for 12,000 to 15,000 tonnes a month at prices below the international market, and 6,000 tonnes were arranged for August. Against a monthly need the desk's sources put near 65,000 tonnes of petrol and 150,000 of diesel, the Chinese September set is a sixth and 2%.
What the headquarters can claim is that nobody in Ulaanbaatar has paid the exchange price at the pump this year. What it cannot claim is that the price has gone unpaid: it has been paid in the queue and in the importers' books, where the difference between a regulated 3,040 and a landed cost the ministry has not published sits until someone names it. Who sets the price in Mongolia is a formula that does not exist yet, in a memorandum with a Chinese state company, on a date the ministry has not given.
Tajikistan: the book with no wall
Dushanbe has no wall, no corridor and no headquarters. It has a customs book, and the book is the price. Tajikistan imported 1.21 million tonnes of oil products in 2025 for $959.3 million, about 84% of them from Russia, and 599,500 tonnes in the first half of 2026, 91.1% from Russia, 2.8% from Belarus, 1.9% from Turkmenistan and 1% or less each from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, at customs unit values of $807 a tonne for petrol, up 8.2%, and $789 for diesel, up 4.2%. The Russian tonne comes in duty-free under an agreement of 2013. LPG is a separate book, 241,000 tonnes, two-thirds of it from Kazakhstan.
The pump moved with the border. AI-92 in Dushanbe went from 10.90 somoni a litre in June to about 13.50 by the start of September and diesel from 11.00 to about 16.50; the statistics for January to July give petrol up 19.2%, diesel up 48.9% and LPG up 35.8%; Asia-Plus headlined the summer's move as petrol up 25% and diesel up 50%. Reuters, as Asia-Plus relayed it, counted Russian petrol exports to Central Asia and Afghanistan down 34% in June and direct deliveries to Tajikistan doubling to 14,100 tonnes in July.
The one instrument Dushanbe has reached for is a second seller. On 15 August in Tehran, energy minister Daler Juma, transport minister Azim Ibrohim and Orienbank's Hasan Asadullozoda met Iran's oil minister Mohsen Paknejad; Avesta reported two days later that the sides had agreed to conclude a long-term contract for the export of oil products and quoted Paknejad saying the contract had already been finally agreed, with no tonnage. Three days after that the same outlet, citing the transport ministry, printed a request: 2 million tonnes of crude, 150,000 tonnes of petrol, 300,000 tonnes of diesel and 100,000 tonnes of jet fuel. One meeting, two claims: a framework the Iranian minister called agreed, and a request the Tajik ministry priced in tonnes. The desk prints them apart, and no contract has surfaced since.
The book's virtue is that it costs the budget nothing, and the World Bank's new framework for the country, read in full on Friday, names debt distress and Rogun's spending among its risks and rates the programme's overall risk high; a wall of the Kyrgyz kind would be one more line in that ledger. Its cost is the diesel print. Who sets the price in Tajikistan is the border, at the exchange rate of the day.
Uzbekistan: the exchange with the state at the screen
Tashkent's machine is a screen. Since the end of October 2024 Uzbekneftegaz has listed AI-92 on the commodity exchange, at a starting price above 11.5 million soums a tonne when the listings began. On 10 March the exchange price rose 7.4% in a day to more than 12.72 million soums a tonne and the volume sold fell by more than half, from 3,784 tonnes on the Friday to 1,835 on the Tuesday; in April AI-92 reached a record and diesel rose 17.5%, by Spot's count. The handbrake the desk's shelf named is not a rule the desk could find on the exchange. It is the seller: a state company that owns the supply on the screen and sets the price at which it opens.
Behind the screen the import book collapsed. Uzbekistan imported 721.5 million litres of petrol in January to August, 41.2% more than a year earlier, for $437.4 million, and the average cost rose from $576 to $606 per 1,000 litres; by month the volume fell from 153.3 million litres in February to 11.4 million in August, 13.4 times less, while the monthly cost climbed from $576 in April to $632 in May, $727 in June, $889 in July and almost $995 in August. The Ministry of Energy explained it on Tuesday: 85% to 90% of imports had come from Russia, and after the Russian refineries stopped the volume fell sharply; the ministry is working on supplies from Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Belarus. Domestic output rose 8.9% to 731,900 tonnes in January to July, and the first deputy minister, Umid Mamadaminov, said in July that the country produces more than 1.2 million tonnes of oil products and private traders import 600,000 to 700,000.
The pump shows two tags. At a Carvon station on 2 September Uzbek-made AI-92 sold at 11,700 soums a litre and imported AI-92 at 13,500, AI-95 at 17,000, diesel at 15,000; the statistics committee's August print has petrol up 1.9% on the month and 20.2% on the year, AI-92 up 10.3% since January and AI-95 up 20.7%. The screen's merit is transparency: of the six machines it is the only one where the tonne has a printed price every day. Its record is in the same print: by the desk's reading, the screen transmitted Russia's shortage faster than any wall, and the state company at the screen chose the pace. Who sets the price in Uzbekistan is Uzbekneftegaz, in soums, one session at a time.
Turkmenistan: two price tags on one litre
Ashgabat's litre of petrol costs 1.5 manat, by the ranking GlobalPetrolPrices published in July, and the state converts it at 3.5 manat to the dollar: $0.43, among the ten cheapest in the world. On the informal market in Ashgabat on 1 September a new dollar bought 18 manat and sold at 18.20 to 18.30, and in Turkmenbashi at 18.60, after a fall Chronicles of Turkmenistan could not explain. At that rate the same litre costs $0.08. Both figures are true at once, one for the statistics and one for the driver paid in manat, and that is the machine: a fixed price under two exchange rates.
The third tag is the export one. The state commodity exchange sells diesel and fuel oil for dollars in weekly sessions, $7.274 million in the week to 31 August by its bulletin, with a separate Monday session Trend reported at $35.5 million for fuel oil to Singapore. Turkmenbashi's refinery burned on 30 August, two days after the Cabinet approved its capital repairs, and no official channel has said what burned or what it cost; the Cabinet itself has published no readout of a sitting since 28 August. Who sets the price in Turkmenistan is the state, twice: once in manat for the pump and once in dollars at the exchange, with the black market converting between the two.
What each machine does when the exchange moves
The six machines answer the same movement differently. When the Russian tonne rises, the Kyrgyz wall pays the difference from the budget until 31 December; the Kazakh corridor lets the chains step up inside a band the ministry publishes; the Mongolian headquarters shortens the book and lengthens the queue; the Tajik pump rises with the border; the Uzbek screen prints the rise the next session at the pace of one seller; the Turkmen pump does not move at all, and the black-market rate does. When the tonne falls, as diesel did by 8.8% in the first week of September, the wall's direction is unpublished, the corridor's floor is where the chains are, the headquarters' book fills, Dushanbe's pump follows with a lag nobody has measured, Tashkent's screen prints it, and Ashgabat's tag stays at 1.5 manat.
Nobody in the six capitals sets the price of the tonne. What each sets is who absorbs the difference between the exchange and the pump: the budget in Bishkek, the chains and the courts in Kazakhstan, the driver in the queue in Ulaanbaatar, the driver at the pump in Dushanbe, a state company's session in Tashkent, and the exchange rate in Ashgabat. The calendar of the next answers is short. Kyrgyzstan's first claims under №579 fall due on 25 September and the wall ends on 31 December; Russia's producers may export diesel again from 1 October and its petrol ban runs to 31 January; Kazakhstan's road-fuel export window, as the desk has it logged, ends on 21 November; Mongolia's zero duties end on 1 February and its Chinese price formula has no date; Russia's Euro-2 permit runs to 30 June 2027. The region does not have a fuel price. It has six ways of not saying what the Russian tonne costs.