Our SGS fuel survey in Russia indicates sales of extremely low gasoline and diesel quality. The results are worse as compared to those of World Wide Fuel Survey and Joint Venture Project in Winter 2018/2019.
Gasoline
In the Survey Summer 2019 SGS took 90 gasoline samples in 18 different cities. We observe several incompliances:
✓RON: 21% of the samples are off-spec
✓FBP: 18% of the samples are off-spec (in 31% of all samples tests show presence of diesel)
✓N- Methylaniline: present in 9% of the samples (with the highest record of 10908 mg/kg)
✓Methanol: 11% of all samples contain methanol with an average of 16.12% m/m (and a maximum record of 32% m/m).
✓There were samples with mixtures of different oxygenates (methanol, MTBE, TAME, ethanol and IBA) in which the maximum of oxygen was 13.7%.
These incompliances were typically noted in the most popular and cheapest gasoline grade RON 92.
Diesel
In the Survey Summer 2019 SGS took 45 diesel samples in 18 different cities. We observe several incompliances:
✓Density: 9% of the samples are off-spec (>845 mg/m³)
✓FBP: 42% of the samples are off-spec. (>360°C)
✓Cetane number: 13% of the samples are off-spec
✓Lubricity: 9% of the samples are off-spec. (>460µm)
✓Sulfur: 40% of the samples are off-spec. (>10mg/kg) with an average for all off-spec samples of 2203 mg/kg. The sulfur results in Summer 2019 are worse compared to the last Winter survey (2018/2019).
The worst quality fuels were observed in the South Central, East and South East Russia. The results are similar to those of Russia’s fuel quality control institution “Rosstandard”. For more information, please see also Russia’s country profile on the fuel quality monitoring (, ). The map below indicates the regions where fuel was sampled.
SGS JV Sampling Map for Russia in summer, 2019
Russia aligned diesel and gasoline quality specifications with the EU requirements: from January 2016 for diesel and from July 2016 for gasoline.
The aforementioned incompliances may severely affect vehicle performance.
What are the reasons for these incompliances?
✓Low quality fuel was sold mainly by small and/ or independent fuel stations that try to reduce their costs of fuel purchased from large oil refineries and transportation costs through blending with low quality products, e.g. straight run gasoline, middle distillates and improve octane through blending methanol, ethanol, N-Methyl aniline, benzene, iron
✓Although some incompliances were noted in Moscow, majority of the incompliances were noted in Central South, East and North part of Russia where the vehicle fleet is older than in big cities; these regions are less developed than the municipal areas of Moscow and Sankt Petersburg and they have large and old agricultural machinery fleet. Fuel distributors presume that they can sell worse quality fuel without receiving complaints from the consumers
✓The same regions are less , there is much smaller number of retail stations managed by the vertically integrated companies (Rosneft, Lukoil, Gazpromneft) where fuel quality is typically compliant with the legislation and the number of large in these regions is much smaller compared to Russia’s West part. This situation creates advantageous environment for so called "tea-port” refineries
✓SGS results of low quality fuels reflect results of the market surveillance conducted by the Federal Agency for Technical Regulation and Metrology (Rosstandard). SGS INSPIRE will publish the results per regions in Russia’s country profile reports
✓Current economic downturn in Russia makes the room in the market for low-priced low quality fuels.
SGS INSPIRE discussed the issue with the fuel experts from All-Russian Scientific-Research Institute for Petroleum Processing. They are responsible for the fuel analysis and development of standards. They informed that low quality fuel sales in the Central, South, East and North parts of Russia have been observed for many years. The situation remains partially due to less developed fuel supply infrastructure, ineffective fuel quality monitoring, low punishment rate and old vehicle fleet. They expect that the change in Russia’slaw to introduce a tax on middle distillates should at least reduce the illegal sales of high sulfur diesel.
For more detailed information about fuel quality requirements in Russia, please see SGS INSPRE fuel specification .