Russia's oil export revenues soar, despite fall in volumes

In January-October 2008, Russia decreased its oil exports by 7.44 percent to 184.543m tonnes compared to the same period a year earlier, Russia's Federal Customs Service reported according to RBC. Meanwhile, oil export revenues rose 51.2 percent to $136.7bn. Oil exports to countries outside the CIS and the Baltic states dropped almost 8 percent to 170.2m tonnes, while revenues grew 50.8 percent to $128.26bn. Exports to the CIS inched down 0.11 percent to just shy of 14.38m tonnes of oil, while revenues jumped 57.1 percent to over $8.443bn.

As reported earlier, Russia's oil output reached 491m tonnes in 2007. The Russian Energy Ministry has projected that oil production will decline by 1m tonnes in 2008 to 490m tonnes. According to the Russian Federal State Statistics Service, Russia produced 406m tonnes of oil and gas condensate from January to October 2008, a 0.6 percent fall from the same period a year earlier.