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.