- GENEVA, Switzerland (UPI)
-- Russian crude oil production is expected to reach 10 million barrels
per day in 2 to 3 years, an influential petroleum industry executive predicted
Wednesday.
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- Such an output would put the former communist nation
on par with Saudi Arabia, currently the world's top oil power in terms
of production capacity.
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- On Wednesday, the Energy Information Agency of the U.S.
Department of Energy had estimated that it would take more than 20 years
for Russia to achieve such a level of production.
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- The agency, in its latest annual energy outlook report,
said Russian oil production would continue to recover from the low levels
of the 1990s and "to reach 10.4 million barrels per day by 2025, 44
percent above 2001 levels."
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- Togrul A. Bagirov, executive vice president of the Moscow
International Petroleum Club, an umbrella grouping for oil companies that
account for over 90 percent of the Russian sector, provided the much more
optimistic projection.
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- Bagirov told United Press International that most of
the anticipated increase would come from "recoverable oil without
any additional investment."
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- Most of the extra oil would come from fields in traditional
regions such as Siberia, he said.
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- The Russian oil industry is developing fast, but the
sector still needs some infrastructure projects, he said.
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- Bagirov asserted that the development of new fields would
surge ahead.
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- He said the recent buying spree by Russian companies
of western European refineries and retail distribution networks was also
likely to continue.
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- "You cannot develop your upstream without investments
on downstream," he said.
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- Bagirov who was in Geneva to attend a U.N.-sponsored
conference on energy security, had told a news conference earlier this
month that the Russian oil industry reached, for the first time, a production
level of 8 million barrels per day.
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- The U.S. agency's report projected oil production in
the neighboring Caspian Basin to reach 5 million barrels per day by 2025,
compared with 1.6 million barrels per day in 2001.
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- The U.S. agency also indicated that the United States'
dependence on foreign oil would continue to increase sharply in the future.
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- Economists at the agency project that net petroleum imports
would account for 68 percent of total U.S. oil demand (crude and refined
products) by 2025, up from 55 percent in 2001, and from 37 percent in 1980.
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- Energy security, which dominated much of the global policy
agenda in the 1970s and early 1980s, with the oil shocks of 1973-74 and
1979-80, has re-emerged as a crucial policy issue, U.N. energy experts
say.
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- The recent attack on the French super oil tanker Limburg
near Yemen, and terrorist acts in major oil-producing countries, such as
Indonesia and Russia, coupled with the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on
New York and Washington, have contributed to a greater sense of vulnerability.
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- Alvaro Silva-Calderon, secretary general of the Organization
of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the oil cartel better known by its acronym
OPEC, said the 11-country group is ready to provide the world with the
crude oil it needs.
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- The OPEC chief said there might be some doubts concerning
security of supply today, but stressed "this is mainly due to the
threat of war (against Iraq) we are having, not due to transportation or
lack of reserves ..."
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- Copyright © 2002 United Press International
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