RIA Novosti citing Mr Igor Artemyev the competition watchdog head as saying that Russia Federal Anti-Monopoly Service has ordered domestic oil companies to cut fuel prices in the wake of the decision by the International Energy Agency to release oil stocks to bring global oil prices down.

Mr Artemyev said "The International Energy Agency has released strategic stocks and today we have sent letters to all the oil companies to warn that if they don’t revise prices downwards, we’ll open new investigations, adding that the IEA decision had contributed to a fall in global oil prices.’

Mr Artemyev said that the competition watchdog was currently probing price fixing by Russian oil majors LUKoil, Gazprom Neft and Rosneft after which they may have to pay large fines amounting to over 1% of revenue.

In the past, the watchdog has fined Rosneft, LUKoil, Gazprom Neft and Russian-British joint oil venture TNK-BP a total of RUB 26 billion for boosting fuel costs.

(Sourced from RIA Novosti)