Russian oil production bounced back in November after a two-month decline to stand at 9.75 million barrels per day (bpd), close to the all-time high, Energy Ministry data showed on Saturday. The November figure was 40,000 bpd higher than output in October and 10,000 bpd lower than the post-Soviet high of 9.76 million bpd, reached in August.
Analysts had expected Russian output, the world's second largest after Saudi Arabia, to extend gains after August and peak by December due to new volumes from the US Exxon Mobil-led Sakhalin-1 project off Russia's Pacific coast.
But the Exxon-led production sharing project has been struggling to bring output to its target level of 250,000 bpd after officials said the group should undergo more checks at its export terminal before starting full-scale exports. The data showed all production sharing projects in Russia extracted 171,000 bpd, up from 125,000 bpd in October.
Exxon is the only production sharing deal in Russia, which has short-term plans to increase output, which means the group has finally started ramping up production and was largely responsible for the overall boost in Russian output in November.
On the export front, shipments abroad fell further in November after a big slump in October as oil firms held back shipments as they awaited a decline in export duties from December from an all-time high in October-November.
Exports via Russia's pipeline monopoly Transneft toward major export ports and the Druzhba pipeline to central Europe fell to 4.16 million bpd in November from 4.2 million in October.
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