OREANDA-NEWS. April 29, 2011. The Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS Russia) had a meeting with representatives of the Russian Fuel Union, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

“The worst situation is in St Petersburg, Voronezh, Novosibirsk, Sakhalin and the Altai region. The way things are, in the next few days many regions can run out of fuel”, explained the President of the Russian Fuel Union, Evegeny Arkusha.

The situation is further aggravated because in the Central Federal District four oil refineries are closed for routine maintenance and in the Siberian Federal District maintenance works are scheduled for May.

The Heads of fuel unions and associations outlined the major problems on the regional oil products markets. The main issue is disproportional decrease of prices on wholesale and retial segments. “If such large players as “Rosneft”, “Gazpromneft” and others reduce retail prices by 5 Rubles, for wholesale purchase the prices for petrol go down by 1-2 Rubles. With such pricing smaller companies are in the red and, and the market experiences shortage”, said the President of Altai Fuel Union, Yuri Matveiko. According to the data presented by participants of the meeting, vertically-integrated oil companies create shortage on the market by restricting supply of oil products.

Igor Artemyev suspects that such behaviour of oil companies displays the signs of antimonopoly violations. “It can be some sort of a cartel collusion, which is severely punished under the antimonopoly law, including criminal liability”, commented the Head of the antimonopoly authority.

As a result of the discussion, it was decided to send a warning to the heads of the oil companies, requesting to stabilize the situation on domestic market of oil products as, and demanding explanations about the causes of such scarcity of the goods.

FAS Russia will inform the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Electric Power Industry of the Russian Federation about the situation on the market of oil products.

Earlier FAS Russia initiated around 40 cases on the violations on the regional markets of oil products as regional retail companies, included in vertically-integrated oil companies, held up wholesale prices for oil products for independent petrol filling stations, particularly, referring to the prices of non-competitive exchange.