OREANDA-NEWS The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) of Russia is going to punish the use of trading robots when trading in petroleum products, up to disabling traders from transactions if they contribute to price increases. This was reported by RIA Novosti with reference to a representative of the department.

This comment followed a complaint that one of the largest Russian independent gas station chains, Neftmagistral, sent to the Ministry of Energy, the Federal Antimonopoly Service and the St. Petersburg International Commodity Exchange (SPbMTSB).

It says that since January 12, the company has not been able to buy a single lot of Ai-92 and Ai-95 gasoline on some bases in Central Russia, and robots are to blame for the situation. The algorithms allow you to place purchase orders from the new weighted average price, taking into account the limitation of its growth by 0.5 percent faster than manually. And after the sale of the batch, traders turn to Neftmagistral with an offer to buy it, but at a premium to the exchange price.

The FAS stressed that they consider the complaint of the network relevant and intend to tighten measures for bidders using such practices. The agency's source in the market notes that the tactics do not differ from what was observed in August and September last year, when the country had a full-fledged fuel crisis.

At the same time, the exchange, which is trying to cope with the task on its own, lags behind traders. They quickly rebuild their algorithms and dominate the bidding process.

Earlier it became known that the FAS is going to introduce actual state regulation of gasoline exchange prices for state and municipal enterprises. In the coming months, the agency wants to introduce a condition that the price of a contract for a state order should not be higher than the arithmetic average of exchange and over-the-counter prices for goods over the past three months.