Putin pledges oil tax relief

Clear signal: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin

AFP/SCANPIX

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News Wires

 04 May 2012 01:51 GMT

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday approved a package of stimulus measures to unlock vast untapped unconventional oil resources in Western Siberia that could boost Russian oil production by up to 2 million barrels per day.

The proposals would encourage investors in Russia, whose status as the world's top crude producer is threatened by falling conventional output at Soviet-era fields, to expand use of costly hydraulic fracturing and other chemical enhanced recovery methods, Reuters reported.

The practice known as fracking, which brought a boom in US unconventional oil and gas output, is already in use at some fields in Western Siberia, the Soviet-era oil heartland, but has yet to open up the so-called tight oil targeted in the proposals.

"This will open a second life for Western Siberia. The…

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