A truck drives past pump jacks at an oil field Buzovyazovskoye owned by Bashneft company north from Ufa, Bashkortostan, Russia, July 11, 2015. The global economic slowdown has hurt millions of households, but has at least had a silver lining: with oil prices falling, the cost of filling up a vehicle with fuel has dropped. Except, that is, in Russia. While in the past two years world oil prices have fallen 60 percent LCOc1, the prices at the pump for gasoline in Russia – one of the world’s biggest oil producers – have risen 11 percent. A Reuters analysis of the pricing structure for Russian fuel has revealed a major reason for this anomaly: a large chunk of the savings that consumers would be making from lower world prices are instead being eaten up by the government in the form of higher taxes. Fuel consumption is falling yet, according […]