Fuel damper
A Russian mechanism that smooths the gap between export and domestic fuel prices through payments from or to the budget.
How to read the number
It explains why domestic fuel prices follow world ones so weakly: the difference is absorbed by the budget rather than by the driver at the pump.
When the metric lies
Its parameters change by government decision, and a revision re-sets refiners' profits at a stroke. The factor is political rather than market-driven, and no price chart shows it.
Also known as: fuel price damper