Rosneft, the Russian oil and gas company and the largest refiner and former partner of international majors such as ExxonMobil and BP, reported a fall in profits but is still managing the Western sanctions storm better than pipeline natural gas company Gazprom and LNG project developer Novatek.
Rosneft said that in the nine months to the end of September 2023 revenues declined to 6,612 trillion roubles ($74.4 billion), down from last year 7,202 trillion roubles ($81.05Bln) during the same nine months.
Operating income dropped to 1,778 trillion roubles ($20.10 billion) from 2,014 trillion ($22.65Bln) in the same nine months of 2022.
BP had previously held a 20 percent shareholding in Rosneft but pulled out immediately following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Sakhalin projects
ExxonMobil also ended its decades-long involvement in Russia, exiting major oil and gas joint ventures with Rosneft off Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East.
Rosneft said its production of liquid hydrocarbons increased by 3.9 percent in the first nine months of 2023 to 4 million barrels per day, mainly due to resumption of production at the Sakhalin-1 oil project.
Total production of all hydrocarbons rose by 10.7 percent in the nine months to 5.5M barrels per day of oil equivalent, whereas output of hydrocarbons in the third quarter had amounted to 5.4 million barrels per day of oil equivalent.
Production of liquid hydrocarbons in the third quarter equalled 3.9M barrels per day amid Russian oil production restrictions since March 2023 to offset the effects of sanctions.
Rosneft’s natural gas production increased by 33 percent in the nine months year-on-year to 1.5M barrels of oil equivalent per day.
Natural gas and associated gas are produced by 35 subsidiaries and joint ventures of Rosneft in Western and Eastern Siberia, Central Russia, Southern European Russia and the Far East.
Refining
Over the years, Rosneft has been consistently implementing a programme to modernise its refineries, which has enabled it to expand its product range and improve the quality of its products such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
The company's refining unit operates 13 major refineries in the Russian Federation and total design capacity of the company's refineries in Russia is 118.4 million tons of oil per year.
Rosneft, which has a 40 percent share of the Russian refining market, said its oil refining throughput increased by 3.3 percent in the reporting period year-on-year to 65.8M tons, and rose 0.9 percent quarter-on-quarter to 21.7M tons.
