Russia's oil production increased to 11.41 million bpd in October from 11.36 million bpd in September, setting a new post-Soviet record high as the largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, raised their output according to data from Russia's Energy Ministry.
Russia's oil production in October jumped to 48.262 million tons, the data showed on Friday, or 11.41 million bpd as per Reuters calculations.
Rosneft increased oil production by 0.5 percent month on month in October to 4 million bpd, while Lukoil's production rose by 0.3 percent from September to 1.68 million bpd in October.
Russia has been raising its production since OPEC and its Russia-led non-OPEC allies agreed in June to relax compliance rates with the cuts to 100 percent from the previous over-compliance. The respective leaders of the OPEC and non-OPEC nations part of the deal-Saudi Arabia and Russia-have been interpreting the eased compliance as adding a total of 1 million bpd to the market.
Russia has already reversed its entire 300,000-bpd cut that was pledged as part of the initial deal and has been adding production in recent months.
Although Russia is smashing post-Soviet records, it doesn't plan to raise output to 12 million bpd by the end of 2018, or in the near term, because this wouldn't fit Moscow's economic development plans, Energy Minister Alexander Novak said early last week.
Russia's oil production in October was around 150,000 bpd higher than its October 2016 level-the baseline for the OPEC+ production cut deal, Novak said.
While Russia has been setting post-Soviet records, U.S. crude oil production also broke records, with monthly output exceeding 11 million bpd in August for the first time, the EIA said on Thursday, noting that at 11.3 million bpd, U.S. crude oil production in August was higher than Russia's 11.2 million bpd output in the same month, making the United States the world's top crude oil producer.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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