Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
Of course; it's been that way for ages, it's only recently that people are looking. As I said, any information from Russian sources has to be assumed to be unreliable. They are in a bad way on a lot of levels, not as bad as Venezuela, but no oil producers are as bad off as Venezuela. That doesn't mean a collapse is imminent: they can carry on for some time just by shuffling the numbers faster. Long term it is not sustainable, but as we've seen in Venezuela things can stagger on for quite a time.



Which press release? If you mean the unsourced price quote from Twitter, if it's Urals it's export; it's an export blend. I don't know of any source that reports internal Russian prices.

This would interest you:

http://www.platts.com/latest-news/sh...crude-26875445

and:

http://af.reuters.com/article/energy...BrandChannel=0

The unusual Chinese purchases of Urals might be an effort to prop up the market, or it might just be taking advantage of low prices.

Data from Platts or based on the Platts window are always interesting because they report actual transactions, not just rolling average price quotes.
Again Dayuhan reported via twitter which you seem to dismiss, but then again it came via yahoo another internet reporting site not quite as fast as twitter.

The sentence is this article is "telling"---do not "panic" Russian population we have a plan........

You will also notice they quote falling oil prices.

http://news.yahoo.com/ruble-plunges-...110647010.html

Deputy foreign minister Alexei Moiseyev sought to put on a brave face, saying authorities were taking steps to curb inflation.

"Don't panic," he said on Tuesday