Russia’s largest oil producer Rosneft is in talks with the government for possible compensation for losses in case OPEC and its Russia-led non-OPEC partners decide to extend the production cut deal through the end of the year, Rosneft’s chief executive Igor Sechin said on Tuesday.
Rosneft doesn’t plan to postpone new project launches, but will comply with decisions about the OPEC+ production deal, and at the same time it will discuss possible compensation for losses, if there are losses from its projects, Russian news agency TASS quoted Sechin as saying at Rosneft’s annual shareholders’ meeting.
Sechin—who has criticized Russia’s involvement in the deal in the past—questioned the Russian rationale of sticking to the cuts, saying that the U.S. would take market share out of Russia if the OPEC+ deal is extended.
At a meeting on March 1, Russian oil firms unanimously agreed that they would fulfill their commitments and would cut production as agreed until the current deal expires at the end of June, Vagit Alekperov, president and CEO of Russian oil producer Lukoil, said earlier this year.
There was some “special opinion” among the Russian oil companies previously, Alekperov said in March, reminding reporters of a letter of Rosneft’s Sechin to Vladimir Putin in which the Rosneft boss criticized the OPEC+ deal.
At today’s annual meeting of Rosneft, Sechin said that he expects Saudi Arabia to seek an extension because the Kingdom’s budget is based on an oil price of $85 a barrel.
OPEC and its Russia-led non-OPEC allies are expected to discuss the fate of the production cut deal on June 25-26, but reports have started to emerge that Russia has suggested delaying the meeting to July 3-4—a notion that Saudi Arabia is reportedly backing, while Iran and many other countries disagree with moving the meeting.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia sought to arrest the oil price slide in recent days, reiterating on Monday that the Kingdom and OPEC would do “whatever it takes” to rebalance the oil market by “drawing down inventories from their currently elevated levels,” Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih said.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
