Russia’s oil and gas revenues are expected to grow 39% in May compared to the same month last year, reaching approximately 700 billion roubles, or around $9.9 billion. This follows from Reuters’ own calculations. The agency attributes the increase to a global rise in oil prices driven by the war in the Middle East. Oil and gas revenues account for roughly one fifth of all Russian budget receipts.
Compared to April, however, the picture looks more modest: revenues are expected to fall by around 17% from the previous month, due to corporate profit tax payments. A further burden on the budget has come from rising subsidies to oil refiners.
In a broader perspective, the year is so far shaping up worse than the previous one. According to Reuters’ calculations, oil and gas revenues for January through May 2026 fell by roughly a third compared to the same period in 2025, amounting to around three trillion roubles, approximately $42.3 billion. The year 2025 itself was no exception to the downward trend: oil and gas revenues dropped 24% to 8.48 trillion roubles (around $119 billion at the current exchange rate), hitting their lowest level since 2020.
The strengthening of the rouble presents a separate problem. The surge in foreign currency earnings from oil sales, against the backdrop of the Middle Eastern conflict and the fuel crisis, drove the rouble to become the world’s fastest-appreciating currency against the dollar in the second quarter of 2026, Bloomberg noted. For Russia’s largely export-oriented economy, this is a double blow: exporters receive fewer roubles when converting their foreign currency revenues, and the budget suffers alongside them.
