LUKoil Head Posts Forecast on Russia's Oil Reserves

Explored reserves of oil will reach 150bn barrels in Russia by 2010-2015, LUKoil President Vaghit Alekperov announced at a meeting of the Energy of Russia deputy group today. He also reported that, according to estimates of foreign experts, the current volume of oil reserves explored by 10 largest Russian oil and gas companies amounted to 76bn barrels. Meanwhile, the share of explored oil reserves in Russia makes up 5 percent of the total explored world oil reserves. This share is expected to increase to 18 percent by 2010-2015.

According to the LUKoil President, the volume of oil production will reach about 420-450m tons in Russia by 2010, and oil exports will amount to 170-190m tons and 35m tons to Western European and CIS countries respectively. In 2002, the volume of oil production will reach 365-370m tons and exports to Western Europe will hit 135-140m tons against 25-30m tons in exports in the CIS.

Alekperov stressed that a significant rise in oil production was bound to result in a deficit in pipeline facilities, so the construction of new pipeline facilities was extremely important.

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