A Barrel Full

 am often searching for detailed information on oil refineries, and information on some country’s refineries are easier to find than others. Russia is one of the more difficult ones. Some companies have quite good disclosure, but others are a complete black box. So when I find a report like this one, I am very happy.I […]

The current Natural Gas surplus is impacting on everyone, and even the mighty Gazprom is not excluded.
Russia’s gas export monopoly Gazprom said on Friday it had agreed with Total and Statoil to delay the giant Shtokman gas field by 3 years due to major changes in the global gas markets.
The reason is that the USA, […]

We are familiar with the plotline. In the middle of winter, Russia demands higher prices for its energy exports to its neighbour, and threatens to shut the pipeline if its demands are not met.
Ukraine & Gas? Not this time.
Russian oil flows to one of two Belarussian refineries could be suspended within 24 hours because oil […]

The perhaps not aptly named Friendship pipeline has been in the news for all the wrong reasons.
The pipeline is one of the world’s biggest and is very significant for the EU’s eastern and central members.
It has a capacity of over 2 million barrels per day (bpd), of which some 1.2 million bpd went directly to […]

Much of Russia’s resources are in inhospitable places. Perhaps none more so than some of the offshore oil and gas in the Russian far east. The size of the possible reserves however, more than makes up for the difficulty of extracting them.
The initial aggregate hydrocarbon resources of Russia’s continental shelf average 100 billion tons of […]

That is the big question following yesterday’s address by Medvedev. Logic says no.
Russia cannot afford cutting gas to Ukraine for a second year in a row as it would have too much to lose 
But logic might not make the decision.
Sceptics say Kremlin policies could be still driven by apparently irrational decision making.  
The current time is […]

This news from Rosneft caught my eye.
An official ceremony took place on August 21 to mark the beginning of commercial production of crude oil at the Vankor field in Krasnoyarsk Territory. 
So what, you might say, these things happen everyday. For once, though this really is a different story.
Together with 14 adjacent sub-soil blocks, licences to […]

In order to avoid Ukrainian territorial waters, the Russians want to place part of their South Stream pipeline in the Turkish area of the Black Sea. Turkey is a sponsor of the Nabucco pipeline, which is a competitor to South Stream, so it was not a forgone conclusion. The media is announcing that agreement has […]

Yesterday, a small piece of news added to the feeling that all roads lead East.
China secured access to vast oil deposits in western Kazakhstan on Wednesday after the energy-rich Central Asian nation said it had completed the expansion of a major oil pipeline to its eastern neighbour.  
Now Kazakistan has a steady customer and China […]

Mr Putin has long seen Russia’s salvation in its energy sector. The rise in prices of oil over the past few years, were a shot in the arm for the Russia economy and like many other oil producers, Russia went down the route of economic nationalism.
The Kremlin wanted complete control of the oil & gas […]