Search
Who sets the price of petrol: six machines between one Russian exchange and the pump
Central Asia and Mongolia buy most of their fuel from Russia and price it six different ways. A tour of the machinery, from Bishkek's dollar wall to Ashgabat's two price tags, and what each one does when the exchange in St Petersburg moves.
Uzbekistan's gas fields gave 15% less in seven months and its power plants gave 6.4% more
The National Statistics Committee's release of 4 September puts January to July gas output at 21.6 billion cubic metres, 3.8 billion below last year, and electricity at 52.5 billion kWh, up 6.4%. Sun, wind and imports stand between the two numbers: solar and wind made 6 billion kWh in the first half, a quarter more than a year earlier, and seven months of gas imports cost $1.01 billion, up 8.2%.
Kazakhstan approves a 700 MW coal plant for its nuclear town, and the coal's owners are among the plant's founders
The government approved on Saturday an investment agreement with GRES Kurchatov LLP for an 881 billion tenge ($1.94 billion) coal-fired station in Kurchatov, the Abai region town that houses the National Nuclear Centre and the country's tokamak. Two of the company's founders, Eduard Ogay and Vladimir Dzhumanbayev, also appear in the 2020 share register of Karazhyra, the mine named at the foundation ceremony as its coal source. The release gives the size and the date. It does not give the price the grid will pay.
Russian crude reaches Kyrgyzstan by Kazakh pipeline for the first time: 35,000 tonnes in August
KazTransOil says it carried its first transit oil to Kyrgyzstan in August: 35,000 tonnes moved through its trunk pipelines to the Shagyr loading point and on by rail. Reuters names the origin as Russia. The route matters because Moscow's export bans cover petrol and diesel, and crude is the good that still travels.
Bishkek's petrol rose 1.5% in the first month behind the dollar wall
The statistics committee's August print shows AI-92 up 1.46% on July and diesel down 0.17%, in the month the government's fuel subsidy, by its own retroactive clause, began running against a $960 reference. The wall is real, it is paid to importers in arrears, and the pump has not felt it.
Diesel in Dushanbe is up 50% since June, and no budget stands between the pump and the border
Asia-Plus priced diesel in the Tajik capital at about 16.50 somoni a litre on 31 August, 5.50 somoni above early June. Bishkek fixes a dollar reference and runs a compensation formula from its budget; Ulaanbaatar holds a regulated pump price and manages the shortfall by the monthly book. Dushanbe does neither, so the whole adjustment lands on the pump.
Dushanbe's fuel ask of Iran is mostly crude
Emomali Rahmon and Masoud Pezeshkian met on the summit's margins in Bishkek on Monday, with a request on the table that Dushanbe sized in August: 2.55 million tonnes of Iranian oil a year, most of it unrefined.
Russia keeps the diesel door shut, and the region's workarounds become the plan
The exemption that was to reopen Russia's diesel exports for producing refineries on 1 September was pushed back a month, 3 days before it started. The ban now runs to 30 September, and the region's importers know their main supplier's calendar is written one month at a time.
Kyrgyzstan moves its fuel wall to New Year's Eve and prices it in dollars
Decree No. 579, signed by Prime Minister Adylbek Kasymaliev on Wednesday, extends the state's compensation of fuel importers from 30 September to 31 December and fixes the reference purchase prices at $960 a tonne for AI-92 petrol, $1,050 for diesel and $650 for autogas. The wall the market had been watching for the end of September now stands at the end of the year, and the treasury's exposure is written in dollars.
The region's fuel backstops harden into the supply plan
Ukraine's drones stopped Lukoil's NORSI refinery on Wednesday, and Reuters counted the wider score: every big Lukoil plant in Russia now stands idle. For Central Asia's importers, the hedges assembled this summer, Chinese contracts, an Iranian request, third-country cargoes inside a Russian commitment, now read as the base case.
A Kazakh refinery turns north, and the minister calls the terms normal
Kazakhstan's energy ministry says an arrangement is in place under which the Kondensat refinery in Aksay keeps up to 30% of its petrol and diesel at home and sends the rest to Russia. The tonnage is small. The direction, with Russia's own petrol exports banned into 2027, is the news.
Kazakhstan cuts its oil plan by exactly what the strikes took
On 25 August Kazakhstan's energy ministry took the 2026 oil and condensate plan down to 96 million tonnes and put the losses from strikes on Caspian Pipeline Consortium facilities at about 3.5 million tonnes. The year opened on a plan of 99.55 million. Subtract the loss from the opening plan and you land within 50,000 tonnes of the new figure. On that arithmetic the ministry is assuming nothing back.
Azerbaijan builds 97% of a power line, and the missing 44 kilometres are Armenian
AzerEnergy says the 330 kV line from Jabrayil to Aghband is 97% complete: 74 km of double circuit, 1,000 MW of capacity, pointed at the border of Syunik. The full chain is meant to run from Jabrayil to Turkey, and every link is built, building or planned on Azerbaijani and Turkish ground except the 44 km that cross Armenia. Baku is building the corridor's hardware first and negotiating its legal existence second.
Georgia's new refinery runs its first Kazakh crude
Kulevi took 5,500 tonnes of Kazakh crude in July, the first Kazakhstan has ever sold into Georgia, at $3.2 million. The operator says August cargoes and Libyan barrels will finish replacing Russian supply. For Astana the volume is a rounding error. For Tbilisi, direction.
Mongolia puts soldiers and tax holidays on an unfinished refinery
The cabinet in Ulaanbaatar has assigned Internal Troops to guard the refinery under construction at Altanshiree and freed the project from land fees for 10 years and property tax for 5. Until the plant runs, Mongolia's fuel security is a daily wagon count from Russia. Wednesday's count was 76.
A 72 million tonne forecast meets a 33 million tonne half
The CPC moved 33.35 million tonnes of crude in the first half of 2026, down 7.4% on a year earlier, by figures Interfax carried on Tuesday from KazMunayGas’s operational report. A 72 million tonne plan for the year is still on the books, and the books now require a bigger half than either half of 2025.
7 months of Central Asian oil via BTC equal 9 days of the CPC
Azerbaijan's statistics committee published the seven-month ledger of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline on Monday: 14.8 million tonnes, down 8.6% on last year, of which Central Asian oil made 2.6 million. Measured against the CPC system's June rate, the transit leg every redistribution plan cites amounts to 8 days of flow.
The tank farm is full at Kazakhstan’s other Novorossiysk outlet
Crude exports through Sheskharis, the terminal that ships Kazakhstan’s KEBCO grade alongside Russian oil, halted on Friday after a tanker turned back to sea and the storage behind the pier reached its limit. No restart had surfaced in the wires by Monday morning, and the CPC terminal next door has now said nothing in its own name for 18 days.
Novorossiysk halts its trains and its grain, and Kazakh oil keeps loading
Russian Railways closed loading toward the port for ten days on Thursday. One grain terminal stopped work the same day, another is repairing damage, and the harbour shuts twice today for live artillery practice. Kazakhstan’s crude leaves from a mooring fifteen kilometres west of all of it, and it is the one flow nobody has suspended.
The record rate to ship Kazakh oil is $440,948 a day
Daily earnings for a tanker running from Novorossiysk to Augusta reached $440,948 on Wednesday, the highest figure in a Baltic Exchange series that begins in July 2008. Washington's undertaking with Kyiv, three weeks old, covers the pipe and the terminal. The price is set somewhere else.