Translated material
For the East
Siberian oil will flow to Asia
The volume of oil refining in the country is falling; a slight decrease is expected this year - by 2.7 million tons. The head of the Ministry of Energy, Sergei Shmatko, announced this yesterday in the State Duma. However, according to him, the situation will change dramatically in six years - during this time it is planned to increase the depth of oil refining in the country by almost a third, building 60 new installations. However, these transformations will not affect raw materials extracted from the fields of Eastern Siberia, since the Ministry of Energy proposes to export them in full.Although during the crisis the domestic fuel and energy industry, as Mr. Shmatko noted, demonstrated “very high resistance to market fluctuations in global oil markets” and even came out on top in the world in the production of “black gold”, it will soon face serious changes. Thus, by 2015, the country plans to commission more than 60 oil refining units. “As a result of modernization and commissioning of new refineries, as well as increasing their technological equipment, a stable increase in the depth of oil refining will be ensured from 77% in 2012 to 83% by 2015. The gradual differentiation of customs duties on light and dark petroleum products - a reduction on gasoline and an increase on fuel oil - will significantly increase the budgetary efficiency of oil refining,” the minister said. According to him, the launch of new facilities will make it possible to increase the production of high-octane gasoline by more than one and a half times and double the production of low-sulfur diesel fuel. At the same time, the minister called the pricing model currently being discussed in the petroleum products market ineffective. As is known, it is proposed to establish fixed prices for gasoline and fuel oil. “We believe that talk about a fixed price for Russian oil products is a dead-end path for the development of Russian oil refining,” Mr. Shmatko said yesterday.
According to the ministry's estimates, over the course of seven to eight years, 1.2-1.4 trillion rubles will have to be invested in technical re-equipment. From 2008 to 2015, investments in the modernization of processing facilities will amount to 1.5 trillion rubles. As Deputy Energy Minister Sergei Kudryashov said yesterday, 100 billion rubles were spent on these purposes last year. And since 2000, only about 200 billion rubles have been invested in the processing of “black gold”. To ensure that all allocated funds are properly utilized, the Ministry of Energy will form a Russian engineering complex capable of designing and constructing installations. Those refineries that do not manage to carry out modernization within the time period established by the technical regulations will have to leave the market.
Experts are not afraid of such significant costs and long-term timeframes for updating oil refining. Thus, according to the director of the Institute of Energy and Finance, Vladimir Feigin, an increase of more than 20% in the depth of processing is very noticeable, even taking into account the duration of the process. “Since Soviet times, when mainly fuel oil was in demand, we have been left with a 60 percent processing level. At the world's most developed industries, the depth of processing today is up to 90%. We continue to stand still, justifying this by the fact that we need the most advanced technologies, and we will not agree to anything less,” the expert noted.
However, oil produced in the fields of Eastern Siberia will most likely not be affected by deep processing. “We proceed from the fact that 100% of East Siberian oil will be exported,” Mr. Shmatko said yesterday. So far, companies can export about 40% of total annual oil production. But for Eastern Siberia, these rules, it seems, will not apply. Let us recall that in order to stimulate the development of local reserves of raw materials, from December 1, the export duty on oil produced at 13 fields in the region was zeroed out. According to some reports, preferential treatment may be extended to all East Siberian fields.
However, according to experts interviewed by Vremya Novostei, such a division of hydrocarbon labor is completely justified. Thus, according to the general director of Finexpertiza, Agvan Mikaelyan, in order to cover the country’s own oil needs, one third of the extracted raw materials is enough, the rest should be exported. “You can already now receive enormous benefits from the export of East Siberian oil. Yes, reserves in Western Siberia are being depleted, but this does not mean that we should keep the Eastern Siberian subsoil untouched for decades as a reserve. In 50 years, there will be completely different technologies, perhaps oil will become much less in demand,” the expert explained. Vladimir Voloshin, head of the fuel and energy sector development sector at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, agrees with him, believing that multi-vectorism should become a necessary criterion for the country’s export policy. According to him, there is no need to fear any serious shortage of raw materials within the country, since the reserves of Eastern Siberian deposits are not so large compared to Western Siberian ones. Consumers in Eastern Siberia will not suffer either, since their demand is low.
Serious difficulties may arise in the implementation of one of the Russian pipeline projects abroad . “There will be problems with Burgas-Alexandroupolis due to the fact that the Bulgarian side insists on increasing the environmental efficiency of this project,” Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said yesterday. An intergovernmental agreement on the construction of an oil pipeline from the Bulgarian port of Burgas to the Greek Alexandroupolis was signed back in 2007. However, now the Bulgarian side, according to the minister, has changed its attitude towards the project: “The Bulgarian authorities believe that the model itself, namely simply receiving dividends, is not very profitable for Bulgaria.” To prevent oil transportation problems from arising in the western direction, the Ministry of Energy proposes that Belarus invest Russian capital in the oil infrastructure enterprises of the republic. In return, Minsk will extend the preferential regime for supplies of “black gold” from Russia.