Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday, 28 September, restricting access to information related to Russia’s fuel and energy sector.
According to the document published on Russia’s official legal information portal, the restrictions will prohibit the dissemination of data on the operations of Russian oil refineries, which have been targeted by Ukrainian drones and have lost around a third of their refining capacity this year.
Under the decree, “information on the volumes of processing and production of goods by a legal entity — a Russian oil refinery” is included in the list of information to which access is restricted.
The decree also prohibits the publication of information about the names and quantities of exported energy products, sellers, buyers and intermediaries, financial settlements, delivery dates and times, vehicles used for transportation, routes, terminals and storage facilities, including their geographical coordinates.
The restrictions also cover “aggregated customs statistics” and even information on “planned sales volumes” of fuel and energy products.
According to the decree, the restrictions apply not only to government agencies such as Rosstat, which publishes official statistics, but also to media outlets and any publications on the internet. The only exception is information disclosed by a producer or exporter about its own activities.
“The dissemination of information included in the list approved by this Decree, including through mass media or information and telecommunications networks, including the Internet, shall not be permitted, with the exception of information disclosed by a legal entity about its own activities,” the decree states.
The Russian government has been instructed to determine within 10 days the specific products to which the restrictions will apply.
According to the decree, the measures are being introduced “in connection with the need to take urgent measures in response to unfriendly actions contrary to international law by the United States of America and foreign states and international organisations that have joined it.”
