Russia's fuel market is unraveling the consequences of strikes on oil refineries are becoming increasingly evident.

[Igel]

5. It's a bit less dire in some ways per the article.

They're citing independent gasoline station chains. They get gas on the open market because they don't do the exploring, drilling, transportation and refining themselves.

There are some large government-affiliated "VINKs", vertically-integrated oil companies, that do the Chinese thing--control their chains from ground to retail pump, and the article says that their gas is "37-50%" cheaper. And, yes, the independents *can* buy it form the VINKs, but there's a surcharge, middlemen take their cut, and there's a 2-month wait before delivery. So there.

When you see "VINK" think "Putin-sycophant oligarch". They are the ones whose facilities are being damaged, but they're also the ones that can pull supplies off the open market, they have large tanks that they can store reserves in, and they have financial resources to both "seize the crisis" to help get rid of pesky competitors (or maybe weaken them to buy them up) and subsidize customers to prevent their patron, the Putin, from looking bad.

If the VINKs can manage to get fuel to the near-Moscow area for a while, it may mitigate some of the shortage but eventually their stocks will run dry even as the openly traded gasoline supply is reduced really to what can be imported from Belorussia. I'd think Lukashenka is happy to be making more cash and be able to say to Putin that he's doing him a solid.