Putin speaks about agreement to freeze oil production

Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with oil industry representatives that Russian business agrees with the idea of freezing the level of oil production.

"He [Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak] is conducting negotiations on the matter [freezing oil production] and has almost reached an agreement with partners in the global market," TASS cited Putin as saying. "Some have even more radical proposals," the president added.

He also noted that Russia's oil industry showed a steady development, with a record-breaking 534 million tonnes of oil produced. At the same time, the greater portion of oil produced in Russia is supplied to domestic oil refineries. "More than half of the total oil produced in Russia is supplied to domestic refineries and is used to make products with high added value. The feedstock conversion rate is growing," the head of state noted.

The President marked the positive role of government decisions to stimulate oil production in Eastern Siberia, the Far East region and offshore, as well as on development of deposits with hard recoverable reserves. 

In addition, Putin said that the quotas are affected by both fundamental economic factors and by 'speculative items'. According to him, all this makes the global hydrocarbons market very unstable. Despite this, the capital expenditures of Russian oil companies in the oil production in the last year were 7.8% higher than in 2014, the President of the Russian Federation noted.