Yekaterinburgnefteprodukt and LukoilPermnefteprodukt were found guilty of violating the federal legislation on the protection of competition, Sverdlovsk Region’s Federal Antimonopoly Service’s department director Yulia Anisimova said to UrBC.

The two companies have been sued for a price collusion that involved AI 76 (80), AI 95 (96), and diesel fuel. The collusion lasted from January 1, 2007 to March 27, 2008.

‘These are two different organizations, so they work with different oil product suppliers; they have different transportation and storage terms, and so on. This is why they couldn’t have had exactly the same prices for sixteen months. The companies were ordered to stop colluding, otherwise they will have to face administrative liability,’ Yulia Anisimova noted.

The problem of motor fuel price collusions is something the entire region is suffering from. It was in the mid-Urals where Russia’s highest gasoline prices were introduced in May 2008.

The gas CPI rose by 3.4% in May 2008 against April 2008 and by 11.3% against December 2007). The price growth touched upon AI 76 (AI 78, etc) (this grew 3.9% more expensive); AI 92 (AI 93, etc) grew 3.3% more expensive, AI 95 grew 2.9% more expensive, and diesel fuel grew 4% more expensive in May 2008 compared to a month earlier.

In May, gas became costlier in seventy-four constituent entities of the Russian Federation, but the increase was most dramatic in Sverdlovsk Region where it came to 7%.