UPDATE: Russia’s Rosneft investment to rise 30% to 1 tln rbl 2016

(Adds details in last paragraph)

MOSCOW, Mar 28 (PRIME) -- The investment program of Russian oil major Rosneft will increase by about 30% to 1 trillion rubles in 2016, CEO Igor Sechin told President Vladimir Putin on Monday.

“I would also like to say, Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin), that established assets, our experience help us raise the investment program this year. This year, it will be larger by about 30% than last year and will stand at about 1 trillion rubles,” Sechin said.

The official said that a public report on operating activities of Rosneft for 2015 will be ready soon and that last year the company’s oil and gas condensate output rose 1% to 254 million tonnes. Drilling went up 30%.

“We managed to raise production drilling by 30% last year because in the previous year, in 2014, there were several factors holding us down. We have managed to tide over a deficit of drilling services, raise our own drilling service, and a 30% increase of production drilling last year was the result,” Sechin said.

Rosneft hopes that its investments will amount to about 1 trillion rubles per year in 2016–2018, the company said in a statement following the meeting. “A significant amount of investments will be directed to keep production at brown fields, including growth of exploration drilling to 34% in 2016 with maintained efficiency level of operations,” the company said.

(68.4346 rubles – U.S. $1)

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