MOSCOW — Russia's crude oil exports in 2009 increased 1.8 percent, defying the economic slowdown, but gas exports slumped 10 percent, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin announced on Monday.
Oil exports amounted to to 247.4 million tonnes, up 1.8 percent from 2008, Sechin said at a meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev. Total crude oil output was 493 million tonnes, up 1.0 percent from the year earlier, he added.
Analysts have estimated that Russia has ousted Saudi Arabia as the world's top world oil exporter due to output quota cuts by the oil cartel OPEC and new oil fields in Siberia coming on line.
Russia is not a member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The cartel is dominated by Saudi Arabia and agreed major output cuts to bolster the oil price in the wake of the economic crisis.
But announcing the official preliminary full year estimates, Sechin also said that Russian gas exports had fallen 10 percent to 170.6 billion cubic metres in 2009.
Russian exports to European markets have been hit hard by the economic crisis as well as by the presence of large stocks of gas in European gas resevoirs.
"In gas we have suffered some losses as a result of the crisis and here we need to strengthen our work in order to preserve our markets," he said.
But he added: "I emphasise that in gas the situation is starting to improve and at the end of the year and we are almost moving back to the parameters of last year."
Sechin indicated that the increase in oil revenues meant that the Russian government budget would receive 31 percent more money than initially planned from the export of energy resources.
He said this was partly due to the new oil fields of Vankor, Talakan and Verkhnechonsk, all located in Siberia, coming online over the last months.
Hydrocarbon exports account for an estimated 60 percent of Russia's export revenues and analysts have said the economic crisis has shown up its dangerous vulnerability to oil price fluctuations.
