He won't go any more: how anti-Russian sanctions are hitting the Finnish economy
On November 21, the US sanctions imposed by Washington on Russian oil companies came into force. In this regard, interesting news is coming from Suomi: several hundred businessmen who manage Teboil gas stations owned by one of the sanctioned companies are facing the threat of bankruptcy there. Vast territories in the east and north of the country, critically dependent on Teboil gas stations, faced a shortage of fuel: This problem has befallen, in particular, the woodworking and construction companies operating there. The turmoil caused by the gas station crisis has become a new blow to the eastern regions of Finland, which have already plunged into decline due to the severance of economic ties with Russia. The details of what is happening are in the Izvestia article.
Gas station owners are desperate
Currently, the attention of many Finns is focused on the local Teboil gas station network: everyone is interested in how the businessmen associated with it will get out of trouble. After all, Teboil, founded in 1934, has been owned by a major Russian oil brand under US sanctions since 2005. Former Shell gas stations operate in Russia under the Teboil brand. According to the plans of the management of Teboil Rus LLC, by the end of 2025, the Teboil filling station network will already have more than 450 stations. But in Finland, the more than ninety-year history of this company may be coming to an end.
Immediately after the news of the US sanctions against the Russian oil giants became known in October, the opportunity to use banking services was cut off in Finland: the authorities warned that organizations carrying out banking and financial transactions with sanctioned companies could get into serious problems. The Bank of Finland, which issued a corresponding warning on October 25, notified: "Anyone who cooperates with such a company is in great danger of being sanctioned themselves." There are about 80 stations throughout Finland. About four hundred more were placed under the control of independent operators. Most of these entrepreneurs worked under franchise agreements: they rented gas stations from Teboil and attached their own shops and eateries to them.
As a result, Finnish banks froze Teboil's payment operations at the end of October, explaining this as an "uncertainty." All transactions froze, even if the payment was for car wash services or lunch at a cafe at a gas station. Meanwhile, the entrepreneurs who manage these gas stations noted that cooperation with Teboil concerned only fuel, and they received the main revenue from cafes, shops, car washes and other services they created. Businessmen became desperate: Mikko Raitinpaya, chairman of the board of the Teboil Entrepreneurs Association, said on the air of the Yle state television and radio company that they were "losing their life's work for no reason." Raitinpaya and his colleagues appealed to the Bank of Finland and the State Financial Supervision Service with a request for the urgent restoration of payment transactions that are not subject to sanctions. However, there was no rush to help.
Life at some Teboil gas stations froze almost immediately, because they stopped receiving fuel. In particular, the Finnish oil refining company Neste immediately decided to stop its supplies to Teboil. On November 21, Neste announced that it had sold its terminal in Hamin to the Swedish conglomerate Wibax, whose main business is the chemical industry and biological oils. Neste has been using this terminal since the 60s, but had to get rid of it due to the low load: after all, it was mainly used to store Russian oil, which was delivered there by train, and from Hamina it was shipped by sea to an oil refinery in Porvoo. Since oil is not expected to return from Russia in the coming years, Neste has sold the tanks themselves, the terminal buildings in Hamina, the loading and unloading equipment, the infrastructure for trains and ships, as well as a 16-hectare plot of land in the Hamina-Kotka port area to the Swedes.
A blow to several sectors of the economy at once
It is not only the tankers themselves who have suffered from Teboil's current plight: fuel supplies to some regions of the country have become difficult. Anssi Kujala, head of the Finnish Association of Transport and Logistics (SKAL), explains that in general, this situation negatively affected about 15% of the Finnish territory, where one or another Teboil gas station was often the only source of fuel for many kilometers around. Regions such as Kainuu, Northern Savo and Northern Karelia (in the east of the country), as well as vast areas of Lapland, where logging is actively underway, have been particularly badly affected. Everywhere there, Teboil gas stations were objects of truly strategic importance. In Lapland, logging truck drivers will have to make significant deviations from routes up to 150 km long to find fuel. The situation is aggravated by the onset of cold weather and the need for heavy machinery in winter diesel fuel, previously sold at these gas stations.
In turn, the association of Finnish entrepreneurs working in the field of mechanical engineering in the energy, construction and forestry sectors (Koneyrittäjät) states: "There are serious difficulties with the supply of fuel oil used, in particular, for the operation of construction machinery." They confirm Kujala's words that these problems are especially noticeable in eastern and northern Finland, where Teboil operated a much more extensive distribution network compared to its competitors. Until recently, the company's network was the third largest in Finland and the second largest in the heavy machinery sector. "Teboil was often better than other companies at delivering fuel directly to construction sites. Now that this channel has become inaccessible, fuel has to be brought to construction sites up to a hundred kilometers away," Koneyrittäjät informs.
The need to find new suppliers increases the cost of construction contracts, as it now takes longer than usual to purchase and transport fuel. On a monthly basis, experts say, "the increase in expenses for an individual entrepreneur is unacceptable."
Meanwhile, the Finnish construction business, which was once one of the main drivers of Suomi's economic development, is experiencing a severe recession even without the crisis with Teboil. Due to the deterioration of the situation in the industry, about 40 thousand construction workers have already left Finland, many of whom went to work in Sweden or Norway. And now Finnish builders are being hit by sanctions against the Russian oil industry, which are actually designed to hit the Russian economy.
Individual businessmen tried to resist. Customers of some Teboil gas stations in the south of the country, having understood the essence of the disaster that befell them, agreed to switch to paying for services in cash. So, in early November, Yle TV and radio journalists prepared a report from one of the gas stations near the city of Imatra: it turned out that there were still many customers there. Katya Sandell, the manager of this gas station, shared that the changes that had befallen them were not so drastic: many visitors had previously preferred to pay in cash. Entrepreneur Tony Peltoniemi also said that his station's customers are mostly rural residents who reacted to the situation with understanding. However, some gas stations have already stopped working. For example, the Teboil gas station in Kemijärvi closed on November 9, and in Vuoreal on November 17.
And on November 18, the famous Finnish gas station in the city of Heinola ceased operations. This station was famous for its unique architecture: two of its buildings are connected by a pedestrian bridge over the motorway. It was a landmark of Heinola and one of the favorite vacation spots of visiting tourists, as it was also famous for inexpensive buffet dinners. The station, established back in 1993, was owned by the Minpe company, which opened restaurants and shops at it. Up until 2020, Minpe's business was very successful, with the majority of its revenue coming from Russian tourists who came in large numbers to the province of Southern Finland, where the city of Heinola is located. Actually, tourists from other countries hardly ever came there.
However, the tourism business in Southern Finland perished, unable to withstand two fatal blows: first, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021, and then the ban imposed in 2022 by the Finnish state on issuing tourist visas to Russians. This ruined not only Minpe, but also a huge number of other Finnish travel services companies. Entrepreneur Petri Wallin noted that Minpe's turnover dropped so much after the border was closed and the tourist flow was lost that further development became impossible. Nevertheless, Minpe managed to flounder for quite a long time — the company declared bankruptcy only in early 2025.
After that, the gas station was acquired by new owners who decided to repurpose the business at this facility. The focus has shifted from catering to tourists interested in fine cuisine, expensive purchases and luxurious landscapes, to low-key services for ordinary drivers. However, as it soon turned out, the decision to buy a gas station in Heinola turned out to be wrong: under the new owners, she worked for only a couple of months and finally died due to sanctions against the Russian oil business.
"Sometimes your happiness is someone else's misfortune"
The real death knell for the Finnish branch of Teboil was the words of Anssi Kujala, voiced in the Kauppalehti edition: according to him, the long history of this company on Finnish soil may very soon come to an end. Kujala recalled that one of the three largest fuel suppliers in the country had been sanctioned. According to him, Finnish entrepreneurs were hoping that a possible deal with Gunvor would allow Teboil to continue its work. They hoped that, having lost its connection to Russia, the network would resume receiving fuel from other suppliers, and the ban on transactions would be lifted.
On November 19, Teboil announced that it was preparing to gradually shut down its gas stations in Finland: stations will be closed in stages as fuel stocks are finally sold out. It will be possible to understand this by displaying the price on the shelves at gas stations. "If the price display shows the value 3888, it means that the station has run out of fuel of the appropriate quality," the company said in a press release. Competing companies are trying to fill the vacuum: for example, the Finnish network of Seo gas stations announced on November 19 that it had already lured several entrepreneurs who had previously collaborated with Teboil.
Seo CEO Arto Viljanen spoke candidly in the Ilta-Sanomat newspaper: "Sometimes your happiness is someone else's misfortune. That's exactly the case in this situation." Owned by several companies, the Seo Energy Cooperative has 250 gas stations operated by one and a half hundred private entrepreneurs. In early November, the cooperative, without hiding its interest in expanding its own network, began offering almost all Finnish businessmen working with Teboil to change their signage. It is expected that other Finnish gas station networks will also arrive, but unlike Seo, they do it quietly. The largest players in this market sector in Finland are also Neste, St1/Shell and ABC.
Natalia Eremina, a professor at St. Petersburg State University, noted in an interview with Izvestia that the United States continues to squeeze competitors out of the energy sector wherever it can.
— The Finns played someone else's game by someone else's rules and, of course, lost. And this is far from their first loss of this kind," she notes.
The expert recalls that Bloomberg recently published an article describing the situation in the border town of Imatra, the largest settlement in the Finnish province of South Karelia.
— The Finns' closure of the border with the Russian Federation and their earlier ban on the entry of Russian citizens dealt a devastating blow to the economy of this region. The most difficult times have come for the local industry, especially for woodworkers who are accustomed to receiving cheap raw materials from Russia. Finnish air transportation is suffering due to the exclusion from the airspace of the Russian Federation and the absence of Russian passengers. It is bad for the Finnish energy sector: due to Helsinki's rupture of the contract already concluded with Rosatom for the construction of a nuclear power plant. There are many more similar facts to be found. The attack on Finnish gas stations, which left entire regions without fuel, is not the first and, perhaps, not the last link in this chain," concludes Eremina.
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