Russia, supplier of about 12 percent of the world’s oil, increased crude production in March to a post-Soviet record as TNK-BP tapped deposits and Bashneft’s new owners squeezed more crude from older fields, data released Friday showed. Crude output reached 10.12 million barrels per day, a gain of 3.3 percent from the same month last year and 0.4 percent from February, according to preliminary data released by the Energy Ministry’s CDU-TEK unit. Exports rose 3 percent on the month to 5.38 million bpd. “I think we’re going to see this continuing this year,” Artyom Konchin, an oil and gas analyst at UniCredit, said by phone.
TNK-BP increased output an annual 3.4 percent to 1.43 million bpd after starting production at the Verkhnechonskoye, Kamennoye and Uvat deposits in Siberia. Bashneft, based in the Bashkortostan republic, has increased output 21 percent to 280,000 bpd in the year since billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov’s Sistema agreed to buy the company. Further growth will probably be led by state-run Rosneft and LUKoil, the country's largest private oil producer, Konchin said. Rosneft’s Vankor project, the largest new development in Russia, is about halfway to capacity, while LUKoil plans to start production in Russia’s section of the Caspian Sea this year.
Rosneft’s output in March fell an annual 1.5 percent to 2.24 million barrels a day after CDU-TEK stopped attributing to it the production at Tomskneft, a venture Rosneft jointly owns with Gazprom Neft. LUKoil’s production fell an annual 1.8 percent to 1.83 million barrels a day. Natural gas production declined about 6 percent in March from February to 1.94 billion cubic meters a day.
