Russia Sees Record High Gas Output in 2019
Russian gas output rose by 1.7% to a new record of 737.6bn m3 in 2019, data released on January 2 by the energy ministry’s CDU-TEK database shows.
Gazprom, the country’s top producer, recorded a 0.5% uptick in supply to 500.3bn m3, its CEO Alexei Miller told reporters on January 2, noting that this was its best result since 2011.
According to CDU-TEK’s breakdown, which does not include Gazprom, Russia’s second-biggest producer Novatek extracted 70.1bn m3 of gas during last year, up from 68.8bn m3 in 2018. This growth came on the back of the ramp-up of the Yamal LNG project over last year.
In third place Rosneft produced 44.7bn m3, down from 45.3bn m3 in the year before. The company's ambitious efforts to expand production have been dashed by project delays.
Gazprom’s oil arm Gazprom Neft, which has a raft of greenfield projects in the Arctic, increased its output from 17.8 to 20.7bn m3, while Lukoil’s production dipped from 21.1 to 20.5bn 3. Surgutneftegaz and Russneft recorded declines from 9.67 to 9.63bn m3 and 2.51bn to 2.36bn m3 respectively.
Russian output came to 67.2bn m3 in December, in line with the level seen a year earlier.
The country also managed to push oil and condensate production to a new post-Soviet high in 2019 or 11.25mn b/day in 2019, up from a record 11.16mn b/day last year, despite Moscow’s Opec+ commitments to keep the lid on production.