Full restoration: of reserves says Yuri Trutnev
Russia boasts 100% reserve replacement
Russia has fully replaced oil output with new reserves since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev said today, as the world's top energy nation seeks to maintain record oil output levels.
Trutnev said in a statement Russian oil reserves as of 1 January were equal to the reserves of 1990.
About 51.3 billion barrels produced since then had been fully replaced with new reserves, he said.
Trutnev gave no figure for the overall reserves, which technically remains classified data in Russia.
Russia, the only country currently producing over 10 million barrels per day as Saudi Arabia is capping its production, features only seventh on the list of world's largest reserve holders, according to BP's statistical review.
It is listed behind Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Venezuela and the United Arab Emirates, with some 79 billion barrels in reserves, but most analysts say the figure should be much higher if including new fields in East Siberia and the Arctic.
Russian oil output has grown by more than 50% since falling to as low as 6 million barrels per day at the end of the 1990s, when oil companies neglected exploration and had no money to invest in new fields.