From 1 January 2027, the Ministry of Transport is introducing a complete ban on the use of modernised tank cars previously granted extended service life for chemical cargoes and now used to transport petroleum products. The initiative aims to eliminate the 'grey' schemes for extending the service life of rolling stock that emerged during the carriage-building crisis of 2015–2016. We examine how this decision will impact the fleet balance and the fuel market.
The transport authority is preparing to fundamentally reshape the rules of the rail freight market by closing a regulatory loophole that allowed age-expired tank cars to operate for decades. According to a draft order issued by the authority on 6 May 2026, as of 1 January next year a full ban will be imposed on including in trains any modernised tank cars that have previously been granted extended service life for transporting specialised chemical cargoes.
The roots of the current situation go back to 2015–2016, when Russian carriage-building was in deep crisis and production volumes of freight rolling stock plummeted by more than 54%.
At that time, to support the factories, the state introduced restrictions: it prohibited the extension of service life for mass types of rolling stock, including gondola cars and tank cars.
However, the market quickly adapted by finding an exception in the Technical Operation Rules (PTE). For wagons transporting specialised cargoes—from yellow phosphorus to toxic chemicals—the option of modernisation and subsequent service life extension of up to 16 years beyond the standard 32 years was retained.
In practice, this gave rise to 'grey' schemes. Rolling stock owners would modernise tank cars under a 'chemical' specialisation, which allowed the legal operation of ageing fleets. The main tool was repairs at foreign facilities, such as the Kazakh enterprise Ak-Zhaiyk-7. The technological process made it possible to expand the list of permitted cargoes from a couple of dozen to three hundred items. This enabled owners to formally comply with the letter of the law while actually using tank cars for bulk transportation of petrol and diesel fuel, thereby competing with owners of new rolling stock.
In the winter of 2026, the issue escalated to ministerial level. At that time, the head of the Rolling Stock Management Department of the Central Infrastructure Directorate of Russian Railways, Roman Khoykhin (subsequently detained by law enforcement; read more HERE), wrote to Deputy Minister of Transport Alexei Shilo pointing out the ambiguity in the PTE: the rules allowed modernisation of a wagon type but did not restrict the nomenclature of cargoes. At the time, the Ministry of Transport saw no violation, explaining that the rules applied to the wagon's design, not its contents. But now the authority has decided to change its stance, moving from controlling content to a complete ban on the very possibility of modernisation for all cargoes except heptyl and melange.
Today, the situation looks like a fight for market integrity. At Russian Railways JSC and the Union of Carriage Builders, it is emphasised that the need for such 'exceptions' has fallen away. According to estimates from the Union of Carriage Builders, in 2026 the industry is ready to produce 12,000–15,000 new tank cars, comfortably covering the scrapping of 8,300 old units. The ban on 'chemical' extensions, the industry experts believe, will remove barriers to the introduction of new innovative models and ensure even plant utilisation.
The question of how this will affect the fleet balance remains key. According to official data, just over 450 'extended-life' tank cars are in operation on the network. On the scale of the entire railway network, this is a drop in the ocean, yet the expert community is divided in its assessment of the consequences of such a move.
To get the full picture, we turn to the views of key industry experts.
"Since 2016, only wagons within their designated service life have been allowed to operate on the Russian Railways network. This means cargo can be transported in wagons as long as their age is less than the figure set by the manufacturer in the design documentation. This was implemented by including in the PTE a clause prohibiting the inclusion in trains of wagons for which, from 1 January 2016, work had been carried out to extend the designated service life," Alexander Polikarpov, Managing Partner and Co-founder of ROLLINGSTOCK Agency, told VG.
"The general rule had a number of exceptions, in particular for wagons that were not produced in Russia at that time, or for those that were needed for state transportation.
In the tank car segment, extensions were conditionally allowed for models used to transport yellow phosphorus, wine materials, heptyl, amyl, acetic acid, toxic chemicals, alkylbenzene sulfonic acid, melange, milk, polyvinyl chloride, caprolactam, superphosphoric acid, and sulfanol.
In 2025, the service life of a batch of petroleum-petrol tank cars was extended by modernising them under the accounting specialisation of 'toxic chemicals'.
According to the documentation, these tank cars could also be used for transporting a wide range of cargoes, including petroleum products. After modernisation, petroleum products were carried in the extended-life wagons. Thus, the ban on extending the service life of petroleum-petrol tank cars was circumvented.
Now the Ministry of Transport is closing this loophole through new amendments to the PTE. In the new version of the Technical Operation Rules, the possibility of extension is retained only for tank cars used to transport heptyl and melange. It should be noted that this change will not have a significant impact on the tank car fleet balance," the expert believes.
Other market participants also urge not to dramatise the situation, pointing out that the logistics of petroleum products are determined by other, far more significant factors.
"The need to renew the tank car fleet for petroleum product transportation will not greatly affect the fuel market, for which other factors play a more important role: the volume of dampener payments; the severity and duration of export bans; excise duty rates on light petroleum products; and finally, the volume of planned and unscheduled repairs.
Rail tariffs for petroleum product transportation can also be added here.
Against this backdrop, tank car fleet renewal is a secondary factor, especially since, as a number of experts believe, the tightening of regulatory norms will not lead to a shortage of specialised rolling stock," Sergey Tereshkin, General Director of Open Oil Market, noted in a conversation with Vgudok.
His position is supported by data on the actual share of 'chemical' wagons in total oil transportation volumes.
"Currently, less than 1% of oil cargo—mainly petrol and diesel fuel—is transported in chemical tank cars. Given the current situation in the freight market, this will have no appreciable effect on the overall network fleet balance," Alexander Kotov, Partner for Consulting at NEFT Research, is confident.
Against the backdrop of a decline in overall loading on the Russian Railways network—over the first four months of 2026, the drop was 1.9% to 363.7 million tonnes—the question of effective disposal of the surplus fleet becomes strategic. The Ministry of Transport's initiative is aimed at clearing the infrastructure of morally obsolete rolling stock. It is important to note that the state is keeping the possibility of operating special wagons for particularly dangerous cargoes, where there truly is no alternative, which demonstrates the balanced approach of the authority.
For wagon owners, the forthcoming changes are a signal to review investment programmes. The era of the 'second life' for tank cars that have undergone multiple modernisations is coming to an end. From 2027, the only legal path for operators will be to acquire new rolling stock.
Clearly, such measures will not cause disruptions in fuel logistics, but they will create clear and transparent rules of the game in which traffic safety and the interests of Russian carriage builders become the priority.
Source: Vgudok
