FINANCIAL TIMES: Russia is gearing up for an oil boom on the same scale as the US, as the techniques that sparked the shale revolution are applied to Siberia’s deposits of unconventional oil, according to one of the country’s top oil executives.
Leonid Fedun, vice-president of Lukoil, said Russia, the world’s second-largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia, will be able to maintain crude output of 10m barrels a day for years to come as output from western Siberia’s Bazhenov Shale offsets declines in the country’s mature oilfields.
But he said such an outcome hinged on new tax breaks the government has promised for the industry. Ministers have proposed a waiver of Russia’s onerous mineral extraction tax for companies drilling in the Bazhenov… (more)
