RUSSIA CONSIDERS ITS OPTIONS: PRODUCTION AND EXPORT STRATEGIES

摘要

As Russia heads into an April meeting in Qatar along with other oil producers, the country is considering a number of output and export scenarios which may help to strengthen its position in a challenging global oil environment. For crude oil, these considerations are focused around two areas, first a production freeze (or even decrease) and second, where this crude output will be sold to. Russia is currently the world's largest oil producer and in March had an average oil output of 11.25M b/ d (including NGLs), according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The country raised it's output to post-Soviet highs at the beginning of 2016 but has also been one of the most prominent non-OPEC countries to both voice concerns over the current global oil market's oversupply and express an interest in potential co-ordinated action to lift prices. The country was the only non-OPEC member of an output freeze agreement in February with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Venezuela (but this required other countries to join before action was taken).