The Kremlin is again in the focus, if he has ever left him, but this time not for a bombing or for an offensive in the war in Ukraine or by a political decision, but by a filtration that has exposed one of the weak points of Moscow: the production of oil. According to the Polish web that cites data from BloombergRussia no longer manages to extract the volume of crude oil that allows the OPEC+agreement. In April, there were an average of 8,975 million barrels per day, a figure identical to that registered in March. This production volume is below the limit set for April, which had already been reduced as a penalty for the excess of previous months.
Although the Kremlin hides the official data for months, several analysts have been able to rebuild the current situation of Russian oil reserves, from shipments by sea and the operation of their refineries. “The difference is small, but politically uncomfortable,” a source in the sector explains to the Polish.
To this is added another problem: the collapse of the price of crude. At the end of April, the Russian government approved a budget reform by 2025. The previous forecast, prepared in autumn of 2024, calculated an average export price of $ 69.7 per barrel. The new estimate reduces 56 dollars, which is a hole of more than 2.6 billion rubles in the State’s income, according to the Eastern Europe Studies Center (OSW).
This adjustment will raise the planned deficit to 3.8 billion rubles. To cover it, the Putin executive will resort to the National Welfare Fund, a sovereign mattress that on April 1 had liquid reserves of 3.3 billion rubles, about 39,000 million dollars. “The rhythm to which they are pulling the background is unsustainable if the situation lengthens,” warns analysts. Moscow, which has been holding for years in the energy sector, now faces a market that no longer responds to allies that do not compensate for the coup.
