Russia oil output at post-Soviet high on foreign projects, Rosneft
* Russian oil production 10.74 mln bpd in September
* Russia contributing to global oil glut
(Writes through, adds detail)
MOSCOW, Oct (HKSE: 3366-OL.HK - news) 2 (Reuters) - Russian oil output, one of the
world's largest, reached a new post-Soviet monthly high of 10.74
million barrels per day (bpd) in September thanks to foreign-led
projects and Rosneft, Energy Ministry data showed on
Friday.
Output rose from 10.68 million bpd in August and eclipsed
the previous record of 10.71 million bpd reached earlier this
year, adding to a global glut that has battered oil prices.
In tonnes, oil output reached 43.961 million, versus 45.17
million in August.
Russian oil production has surprised analysts and industry
watchers with its almost uninterrupted rising trend despite
widely assumed predictions it would fall due to the depletion of
fields in West Siberia, the country's largest oil province.
New (KOSDAQ: 160550.KQ - news) technologies and active drilling helped production to
rise.
Russia has been unwilling to cut output to support the price
of oil, which has more than halved since peaking in June 2014 to
trade just below $50 per barrel - the level on which
Russia's budget is formed.
According to Kuwait's oil minister Ali al-Omair, global
crude oversupply is around 1.8 million bpd. He expects oil
prices to rise by the end of 2015.
Friday's data showed that Russian oil output under
production-sharing agreements, designed in the 1990s to
encourage investment by foreign oil firms, jumped 10 percent in
September from August to almost 1.23 million tonnes (300,000
bpd).
The ministry gave no breakdown of the data for those
projects, which include Sakhalin-1 developed by Rosneft,
ExxonMobil, ONGC and Sodeco; Sakhalin-2
involving Gazprom, Shell (LSE: RDSB.L - news) , Mitsui and
Mitsubishi ; and Kharyaga with Total (Swiss: FP.SW - news) , Statoil (Hamburg: 1245893.HM - news)
and Zarubezhneft.
Sanctions do not affect those projects.
Production at Rosneft, the world's largest listed oil
producer by output, edged up 0.4 percent.
Pipeline oil exports via the Transneft monopoly
stood at 17.784 million tonnes (4.345 million bpd), up from
16.903 million tonnes in August.
Gas production was at 47.17 billion cubic metres (bcm) last
month, or 1.57 bcm a day, versus 43.7 bcm in August.
(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Dale Hudson)