Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking at a meeting with members of the government today, stated about the generally reached agreement on freezing oil production in 2016 at the January level.
"We met with the management of our oil companies. In general, we reached an agreement that we will maintain the level of oil production in 2016 at the level of January of this year," TASS quoted him as saying.
Summing up the results of today's meeting, the head of the Kremlin press service, Dmitry Peskov, informed about instructions of the president to continue to work with the major oil producing countries, because not all of them have clarified their views on the idea of freezing of oil production yet. "We will continue to work with other major producers, we mean countries, because there is still a lack of clarity on a number of producing countries," RIA Novosti quotes him as saying.
"At the same time, the fact that many countries have joined – this was also told by Novak yesterday – but there are still countries that have not completely clarified their views on this idea yet," Peskov added.
In addition, according to the head of the Kremlin press service, during the meeting, the president clearly outlined his position on the proposal of the Ministry of Energy to keep the volume of oil production at the level of January of 2016, and also noted the work that the Ministry of Energy of Russia has done with partners from other countries on the subject of keeping oil production at this level.
The Deputy Director of the Energy Section of the Institute of Energy and Finances, Alexey Belogoriev, in an interview with the correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza, expressed the opinion that maintaining production levels at the January level "is not a restrictive measure in any way, but rather reflects a very optimistic vision of the production forecast for this year."
"That is, if we can maintain January production figures during this year, it will be a great success. Frankly speaking, this is unlikely. That is, it is wishful thinking," he said.
"The oil companies did not plan to maintain production at the January level. That is why the agreement, which has been reached, will not affect the plans of companies for extraction or oil exports in any way, since this plan, which was proposed by the Ministry of Energy, exceeds the wishes of companies themselves," the expert added.
