Brownfield sites curb Russian growth

Producers profit from post-devaluation oil prices—but oil fields are depleting

As we had predicted in the last year's article, oil production in Russia continued to grow in 2018. According to the Russian Ministry of Energy, in 2017 oil output totalled 11mn bl/d, in accordance with the Opec agreement when Russia had to cut production by 300,000 bl/d. In the ten months of 2018 so far, output grew on average to 11.1mn bl/d. In October production exceeded the previous historic maximum of 11.4mn bl/d recorded in October 2016, just prior to the Opec deal. Production growth in 2018 was driven by the June decision of Opec to increase production to offset output losses in Venezuela, Iran, Mexico and Angola. That prompted Russia to accelerate the launch of new projects and the d