Russia’s 2023 oil and gas condensate production declined by less than 1% to 530 million metric tons (10.6 million barrels per day), Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told the energy ministry’s in-house magazine.
The higher than expected figure includes gas condensate, which is excluded from Russia’s quota under the deal agreed by the OPEC+ group of leading global oil producers.
Energy Minister Nikolai Shulginov late last year said that Russia’s 2023 oil output was expected to have declined to 523 million tons (10.46 million bpd) or “maybe slightly less”.
Saudi Arabia and Russia, the world’s two biggest oil exporters, had called for all OPEC+ members to agree on supply cuts after a fractious meeting of the group.
Russia had agreed to deepen cuts to crude oil and oil products exports to 500,000 bpd in the first quarter of 2024.
Promises made to OPEC+ meant that Russia’s oil exports in 2023 would total less than the 247 million tons used in Russia’s main macroeconomic forecasts, Novak said last month.
GAS
In a rare disclosure of Russian energy production data, which has been largely classified since the start of the conflict in Ukraine in February 2022, Novak also said that total pipeline gas exports reached 91.4 billion cubic metres (bcm) in 2023. He did not provide any comparison figures.
Russian natural gas exports to Europe, once its key source of energy revenue, plummeted in 2022 and 2023 because of the Ukraine conflict and after explosions at the Nord Stream undersea gas pipelines in September 2022.
Russia has diverted oil and gas exports away from Europe to Asia, mainly to China and India. It is boosting gas exports to China via the Power of Siberia pipeline, supplies through which are expected to reach full annual capacity of 38 bcm by 2025.
Novak said Russian gas pipeline exports are expected to rise by 11% to 108 bcm in 2024 thanks to higher flows to China.
Russia has long sought to build Power of Siberia 2 via Mongolia to increase gas exports to China by 50 bcm per year but a deal has proved elusive.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin, Editing by Jason Neely and David Goodman)