Booty for justice – MK

New economic challenges, primarily in the energy sector, continue to excite the domestic extractive industry. Western countries are threatening to stop buying Russian energy supplies in order to limit Moscow’s cash receipts from exporting raw materials. However, as practice shows, the production and financial stability of the oil and gas companies of our country, even in difficult macroeconomic circumstances, allows us to move step by step towards new achievements, while major players in the global fuel market often suffer one setback after another.

It’s no secret that the domestic economy in recent years is going through not the best times in its history. Unforeseen circumstances, such as the global coronavirus pandemic, far from always favorable weather conditions, and most importantly, Western sanctions, have become a serious test of the stability of the Russian financial system. The mining industry, which has always served as an excellent support for the federal treasury, has actually found itself at the forefront of our country’s trade confrontation with foreign critics and opponents.

The most painful nodes of the oil and gas sector suffered, in particular, the prices for logistics and accompanying services for the supply of “black gold” have seriously increased. Back in May, according to the Baltic Exchange in London, the daily cost of chartering an oil tanker from Primorsk to northwestern Europe hit a 2008 record. In addition, the financial results of domestic producers were also affected by internal negative factors, including tariffs for the transportation of raw materials by rail, which increased by 18.6% since the beginning of the year, and electricity prices, which reached about 30% in the cost structure of most industrial enterprises. .

Domestic miners managed to reverse the dynamics of negative industry trends. In August, foreign deliveries of Russian oil increased to 5 million barrels per day, and together with the products of processing “black gold” – up to 7.6 million “barrels”, which ensured an increase in Russia’s export earnings in the amount of $ 17.7 billion. Nevertheless, this year the production of liquid hydrocarbons in our country still runs the risk of being reduced. As Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said, production may decrease by 5-8%: from 524 million to 480-500 million tons. “The forecast may change depending on the situation,” the deputy prime minister said.

Prospects for increasing hydrocarbon production in comparison with Western industry competitors for domestic producers are quite high. Take, for example, the raw material majors of the international market: if we consider global energy supply operators, the performance of Russian companies differs enviably from the statistics of foreign specialized partners. Of all the international oil corporations, only the American ExxonMobil predicts an increase in its production, the pace of which is likely to be more than modest: the holding’s engineers assume that their company’s production surplus this year will not exceed 3.7 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, which is in annual terms will provide an increase of only 0.5% of the total production capacity of the concern. The position of other emissaries of the Western commodity community is even worse: the British Shell is already producing 13% less than last year, the production results of the American Chevron fell by 4.8%, the Norwegian Equinor – by 1.5%, the Brazilian Petrobras – by 2%, and Italian ENI – by 2.6%. The worst performer was British BP, whose production fell by almost 2.6 million barrels of oil equivalent, or about 20% per day.

Compared to the economic troubles of foreign producers, the Russian mining industry is still relatively stable. Industrial leaders are in no hurry to voluntarily leave the world market, on the contrary, trying to promote new customers all the benefits of their own products. Such a policy actually becomes the key to progress. Despite external factors and internal restrictions, the hydrocarbon production of one of the leaders in the Russian commodity market, the state corporation Rosneft, reached 4.85 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in the first half of the year, which means an increase of 1.5% in annual terms. True, it is not the current unstable economic situation on the international market that should be thanked for the production achievements of the Russian holding, but its own pragmatism, which contributed to an increase in the production of liquid hydrocarbons at the company’s new large projects that have been in operation for more than five years. The share of such projects added several percent per year and has already exceeded 14% in the total production of liquid hydrocarbons of the holding.

With regard to natural gas, another major energy resource of the planet, Western producers can hardly boast of similar dynamics to Russian companies: only the Norwegian Equinor was able to strengthen its positions in this direction, increasing the production of “blue fuel” by 5%. In turn, Chevron’s gas production decline was 1.7%, ExxonMobil – 2.3%, BP – 5.5%, and Shell – almost 12%. At the same time, domestic oil companies, on the contrary, pay close attention to the development of the gas sector. In particular, Rosneft’s production of “blue fuel” in the first half of the year grew by more than 9% and came close to achieving the holding’s strategic goal of increasing the share of gas in total hydrocarbon production to 25%. In general, thanks to the taken production decisions, the revenue of the Russian concern in the first half of the year increased by more than 32% and exceeded 5 trillion rubles, while net profit reached the bar of 13%, amounting to 432 billion rubles.

It is worth noting one more significant detail: both in relation to gas and oil, domestic producing companies do not focus on deposits that have long been part of their resource bases, but invest and put into operation new promising facilities. In particular, Rosneft is implementing one of the world’s largest hydrocarbon production projects, Vostok Oil, in the north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. It includes more than a dozen oil and gas fields. This summer, Rosneft, in the course of comprehensive exploration work, significantly increased the reserves of “black gold” at the Vostok Oil project. As a result of drilling at the Zapadno-Irkinskoye field, two new deposits were discovered with recoverable oil reserves in the amount of more than 100 million tons, and the resource base increased to 6.5 billion tons.

“Even in the face of an economic clash with the West and the constant tightening of sanctions pressure on the Russian economy, Russian participants in the commodity sector continue to testify to their noticeable advantage over foreign competitors,” says Sergey Suverov, investment strategist at Arikapital Management Company.