There is no reception against the drill – Kommersant FM

Russia is rapidly increasing oil drilling, despite sanctions pressure, writes Bloomberg. The agency also refers to data from Kpler analysts and the consulting company Yakov and Partners. According to their preliminary calculations, the Russian Federation drilled about 30 thousand km of wells in a year, which may turn out to be a post-Soviet record, Bloomberg emphasizes. It is noted that, judging by these data, sanctions pressure on Moscow is not working fully. But, on the other hand, they indicate that current deposits are being depleted.

The agency’s interlocutors claim that limited access to Western technologies is forcing a return to more traditional drilling methods. As a result, this may also affect the reduction of production at each individual field. Energy expert at the Financial University Stanislav Mitrakhovich disagrees with this:

“To develop the oil industry, it is necessary to have a certain level of exploration work in order to produce oil in no less volume than before, and in order to develop geological projects in the future. For now, we are still drilling in places that do not require completely new technologies. But in the future they will be needed for the development of hard-to-recover reserves, not to mention the Arctic shelf and so on.

As traditional deposits become depleted, we will have to create new technologies to develop more complex reserves. And how we can do this is a separate question. But it will have to be resolved.”

In the fall, Vedomosti reported that new oil wells in Russia are now being developed mainly in Western Siberia. And there, as a rule, a horizontal drilling method is used. This can explain the record figures reported by Bloomberg, explained Alexander Frolov, Deputy Director General of the Institute of National Energy:

“It’s one thing if you work with classic large fields, then you have vertical wells, say, 2 km. And if you’re dealing with complex reserves, you start to use horizontal directional drilling more and more. And you can have a well of the same productivity as this two-kilometer vertical well in a typical large field, while its length can be 15 km. And this will indicate an increase in drilling volumes.

Meanwhile, there are no prerequisites for changing the main oil export flows. After all, the system that settled down in 2022-2023, the directions that had developed by that moment, were not accidental. Let’s say that supplies to China were leading among supplies to all countries to which we exported our oil until 2022.

If we take India, it is one of the most growing markets, on the one hand. On the other hand, part of the supplies could be withdrawn from this direction, for example, to Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and these volumes could be transferred to the United States.

That is, we had an exchange with these countries after the introduction of an embargo on oil from the Russian Federation by the United States: America kicked out Russian oil, but now Saudi Arabia is in our place, third among exporters, and Iraq is in fourth. And we are now ahead of both Saudi Arabia and Iraq in the Indian market. At the same time, India is a growing market, like China, so the main supplies will go there.”

Bloomberg also reported that in 2023, Moscow earned more from oil trading than before the introduction of a price ceiling on it by the G7 countries and the European Union. At the same time, in December, India reduced purchases of Russian raw materials to the lowest level since the beginning of 2023. Reuters wrote that Delhi plans to increase supplies from Saudi Arabia against this background.

Deputy head of the economic department of the Institute of Energy and Finance Sergei Kondratyev believes that in 2024 purchases of Russian oil are unlikely to decrease noticeably. But some risks, according to him, still remain: “If restrictions related to control over the price ceiling are tightened, this may force some buyers to leave the Russian market, and some, for example, insurance companies and firms engaged in transportation. All this could immediately lead to an increase in discounts for Russian oil.

But I would not expect a scenario in which oil supplies from Russia to China or India would sharply decrease, because it is now difficult for these countries to find alternative suppliers.

We see that oil refiners in China are even concerned about the fact that Venezuela is redirecting a small part of its supplies from China to India. There is not much free oil on the market, and in fact, if you want, for example, to reduce imports of Russian oil, then you need to buy more of it, for example, in the Middle East and Latin American countries, and this is premium oil.”

Recently, Bank of America analysts lowered their forecast for the average Brent price for this year from $90 to $80 per barrel; Morgan Stanley even cites the figure at $77.

Andrey Zagorsky, Petr Shadrin