Customs Union Technical Regulation on Requirements for Vehicle and Aviation Petrol, Diesel and Marine Fuel entered into force on 1 December 2012.
The Regulation contains requirements for petrol and other types of fuel manufactured or imported into the Customs Union. It does not apply to fuel intended for export outside the Customs Union territory and to fuel intended for own consumption of oil mining companies and drilling platform operators.
The Regulation introduces, for the first time, the concept of “environmental class” of fuel. An environmental class is a code (K2, K3, K4 and K5) which is assigned to a particular fuel type, depending on the environmental safety characteristics of the fuel. The higher is the code, the safer is the fuel for the environment.
Each Customs Union country (i.e. Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia) is to set its own timeframe for the implementation of this Regulation and will gradually transfer to the use and manufacture of fuel belonging to environmental class K5.