Russia is currently pumping 9.9 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil, but has the capacity to increase production to up to 11.4 million bpd, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Thursday.
Nevertheless, the output level should be guided by the market, Novak added.
Russia’s oil production in October will be 9.9 million bpd, as Moscow is aligning its output with the OPEC+ agreement, Novak said at the Russian Energy Week forum today.
The country has previously reached maximum production of 11.3 million bpd-11.4 million bpd, the official added, noting that Russia has no problem in boosting output to that level. However, it is necessary to take into account the situation on the oil market, Novak said.
The deputy prime minister, who is in charge of leading Russia’s participation in the OPEC+ deal, also said that the current oil prices and supply-demand balance adequately reflect the situation, and Russia doesn’t expect extreme volatility on the oil market in the short term.
Russia expects its crude oil plus condensate production to return to pre-pandemic levels by May 2022, Russian officials, including Novak, have said in recent months.
As per the latest quota distribution of the OPEC+ group, Russia, the leader of the non-OPEC producers in the pact, has a ceiling of 9.913 million bpd for November—the same as OPEC’s de facto leader and top producer, Saudi Arabia.
Russia’s crude oil production is trickier to estimate than the output levels of the other OPEC+ members because official Russian data doesn’t discriminate between crude oil and condensate production, but condensates are excluded from Russia’s OPEC+ quota.
Bloomberg estimates put Russian crude and condensate production in September at 10.7 million bpd. If condensate production was around 880,000 bpd, this would put Russian crude oil output at 9.83 million bpd, which would be 130,000 bpd above quota, as per Bloomberg calculations.
Analysts say that Russia may have reached its capacity to produce oil.
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By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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