Drilling ahead: in Russia
Russian output takes a dip
Russian oil production fell by around 1% last year, official data showed, the country's first annual decline in a decade after large increases in previous years and a sign of things to come.
The decline is widely expected to continue because of ageing reserves and plunging oil prices, which combine with heavy taxation to leave producers with limited cash to invest in maintaining production and opening new fields.
The Energy Ministry data showed that December crude and gas condensate production fell 1.6 percent, month-on-month, to 9.66 million barrels per day, bringing the annual average output to 488.105 million tonnes or 9.78 million bpd.
The annual figure is 0.9% lower, on a daily basis, than Russia's 2007 oil production, which stood at 491.481 million tonnes or 9.87 million bpd, a Reuters report said.
Analysts expect oil output growth to recover only in the next decade after a number of new major deposits are launched in Eastern Siberia, which is rich in resources but lacks infrastructure.
In 2007, output rose 2.3% from 2006, supported mainly by the Sakhalin-1 field on the Pacific island of the same name, developed by US supermajor ExxonMobil.
The data also showed that Russian oil exports via pipeline monopoly Transneft fell by more than 5% to 4.19 million bpd (209.152 million tonnes) last year from 4.43 million bpd (220.597 million tonnes) in 2007.
In December, Russian oil exports via Transneft rose by 17.8% to 4.36 million bpd (18.445 million tonnes) against 3.7 million bpd (15.142 million tonnes) in the previous month.
Natural gas output by Gazprom, the world's largest gas producer and supplier of a quarter of Europe's gas needs, stood at 550.587 billion cubic metres in 2008, compared with 549.597 Bcm in 2007.