Has Russian oil and gas production recovered to pre-2008 levels yet?
What we’ve actually seen is that Russian oil production has been going up again this year. And a large part of that is due to a number of new fields that have all come into production, not simultaneously but over the last six to 12 months. And those fields have been ramping up towards their peak production level at varying speeds. They had contributed by August, around 300,000 barrels a day of incremental production. So that’s really where the increase in Russian output has come from. The biggest one of those in terms of its contribution at the moment is what’s generally known as the YK field because it’s virtually unpronounceable. It’s a field being developed by Lukoil and Conoco in the far north of Russia and that’s producing about 150,000 barrels of oil a day at the moment. TNK BP has two or three new fields that it is producing from; the Verkhnechonskoye in East Siberia. Uvat in West Siberia, and another small one. Surgutneftgas is developing Talakanskoye oil field in East Siberia
