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62 comments on DrumBeat: June 4, 2007

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westexas on June 4, 2007 - 9:27am Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

Anyone seen any confirmation for the claim in the following column that "Russian oil production is declining dramatically?"

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/nina_khrushchev/2007/06/ill_be_your_...
From the Guardian:
Mirror images

Presidents Putin and Bush will meet at G8 next week. But they have much more in common than they think.
Nina Khrushchev
June 3, 2007 3:00 PM

The Russian public, habituated to authoritarianism, wants Russia's rulers to be firm. Yet the true test of a ruler is not to pander to his people's expectations, but to peer into the future and match the country's aspirations with its needs and capacities. In this, Putin's arrogance is failing Russia miserably. His monomaniacal drive to centralise power is driving out the very expertise that the country needs to flourish. Shell and BP are being expelled from the oil industry at the very moment that Russian oil production is declining dramatically. His embittered attempts to counter American power are equally short-sighted: helping Iran develop its nuclear program and selling high-tech weapons to China are hardly in Russia's long-term strategic interest.

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FTX on June 4, 2007 - 9:59am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Doesn't seem to square with the official position.

MOSCOW. June 4 (Interfax) - Russia produced 202.754 million tonnes of oil and gas condensate in January-May, up 3.2% year-on-year, including 41.469 million tonnes in May, the Fuel and Energy Central Dispatch Center said.

Gas production rose 0.3% year-on-year to 284.929 billion cubic meters in the five months, including 53.241 bcm in May.

Russian oil exports to non-CIS countries rose 5.6% to 90.993 million tonnes in the five months, including 19.003 million tonnes in May.

Oil exports to the CIS fell, by 3.4% to 15.077 million tonnes in the five months, including 3.387 million tonnes in May.

Source: Interfax

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Darwinian on June 4, 2007 - 10:41am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

This 3.2% increase is year over year for the first five months of the year. Last year, Russia averaged 9.116 million barrels per day for the first five months of the year. For January and February of this year they averaged 9.440 million barrels per day. (The April numbers are due out in a day or so.)

A 3.2% increase this year would mean Russia would average 4.08 million barrels per day over the first five months of 2007. They are already well above that figure for the first two months. This means that the average for March, April and May must be well below the average for January and February.

Of course this all depends on the EIA numbers being close. This is not very likely.

Ron Patterson

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FTX on June 4, 2007 - 11:48am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Officially y-o-y C&C production was +4.2% for the first quarter, +3.7% for Jan-Apr, and now +3.2% Jan-May. So the rate of growth certainly seems to be declining (it's noticeable that the Energy Ministry used to crow about month-on-month gains but has now started to use aggregated figures).

The Jan-Apr figure was 161.4m tonnes, which implies that May 2007 vs May 2006 was still positive, at +1.6%. Nevertheless, it'll be interesting to see whether Russia goes negative soon.

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Darwinian on June 4, 2007 - 2:41pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Last May Russian production was 9.190 mb/d. A 1.6% imporvement on that would put May 2007 production at 9.337 mb/d. That is abour 120 thousand barrels per day below the 9.46 mb/d they produced in February 2007.

Ron Patterson

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westexas on June 4, 2007 - 4:38pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

From the Guardian:

Nina Khrushchev is a professor of international affairs at New School University. Her book Imagining Nabokov will be published by Yale University Press this autumn.

Nina Khrushchev is the granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union after the death of Joseph Stalin.

Nina Khrushchev's work for Cif is copyright Project Syndicate/Institute for Human Sciences, 2007.

http://www.project-syndicate.org

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62 comments on DrumBeat: June 4, 2007

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