Russian oil exports fall 4% to 5% on a 0.7% production decline

[GliderGuider]

UPDATE: Russia cuts May oil output 0.7% on year to 9.699 mil b/d

Moscow (Platts)--2Jun2008

Russia's crude output was 41.189 million mt (9.699 million barrels/day) in May, down 0.7% from the same period a year ago, preliminary figures from the country's industry and energy ministry showed Monday.

Exports of Russian crude to countries outside the Commonwealth of Independent States totaled 18.058 million mt (4.252 million b/d) in May, a 5% drop from the previous year, the CDU said.

In addition, another 1.984 million mt of crude from CIS-member countries, mainly Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, passed through Russia for export to non-CIS countries. In total, around 20.043 million mt of crude was exported from Russia to non-CIS countries, 4% down on the previous year.

May exports to CIS countries fell 10% year-on-year to 3.051 million mt, the CDU figures showed.

Net oil export crisis anyone?

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On edit: Just to be scrupulous, the article says nothing about the export volumes of refined products. Those may have risen, thus offsetting some of the decline in crude exports.
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Edit update: I went looking for information on Russian refined product exports, and found this from the EIA:

Most of Russia's product exports consist of fuel oil and diesel fuel, which are used for heating in European countries and, on a small scale, in the United States. Russian oil exports to the U.S. have almost doubled since 2004, rising to over 400,000 bbl/d of crude oil and products in 2007. Updated monthly and annual data are available from EIA’s Petroleum Navigator. Increases in product exports can be attributed to political pressures to maintain refinery operations and higher international oil product prices. A draft plan for the refining sector’s development for 2005-2008 foresees continued increases in the production of high quality light oil products, catalysts and raw material for the petrochemical industry. As production of fuel oil is reduced, local refineries are only meeting about half of the country’s demand for high octane gasoline. Consequently, Russia must import the remainder.

So it looks as though they probably aren't making up the export decline with large volumes of refined gasoline. It's a net export problem after all.

[phantom power]

1. Sounds right. There was that story about fuel protests in 50 Russian cities.

[robertpaulsen]

2. According to Stuart Staniford, they can't split the difference with future megaprojects either.

Are We Missing Russian Megaprojects?
Posted by Stuart Staniford on December 24, 2007 - 2:00pm
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: megaprojects, peak oil, russia


Monthly Russian oil production according to three data sources, Jan 2003 - Aug 2007 (left scale), and oil and gas rigs in country (right scale). Sources: EIA Table 1.1c, IEA Table 3, and JODI. Solid smooth lines are 13 month centered moving averages, recursed once (note last 13 months rely on an incomplete window). Production graph is not zero-scaled. Rig data are from Schlumberger data and include both oil and gas rigs.


This piece looks at the question of whether the Russian oil production increases of recent years might have been due in part to projects that should have been listed as megaprojects, but went missing due to lack of transparency on the part of Russian companies (or at least lack of transparency to English speaking readers). The tentative answer to the question is "No."
Instead, it appears that Russian production increases are in large part due to revival of mature Soviet era fields as the Russian economy recovered and as now-private Russian companies applied Western techniques of oil production (and Western contractors) to their fields.

snip

So in summary, I don't think we are missing any megaprojects of any great consequence in recent years from Lukoil. Although my research is incomplete, this seems to be the pattern at other companies also. Production increases have been coming from better management of the very large but significantly depleted Soviet-era fields, along with commissioning of very small new fields. Only a handful of megaprojects have occurred.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3364

[tom_paine]

3. Oh, you're just another doomer!

Gotcha, Paul! :rofl:

At any rate, good find. Just another data point in the growing overwhelming evidence that, no matter what the chicanary of Bushie Criminals trying to maximize profits off the tragedy, the mathematics behind Peak Oil are inexorable.