Russia oil firms face heavy fines for gas flaring

Russian oil companies are facing fines of hundreds of millions of dollars or more for polluting the atmosphere with excess amounts of flared gas, the newly appointed resources minister said on Saturday. ...

Rosneft is seeking to borrow up to US$30-billion from China in exchange for possibly doubling oil supplies, making Beijing the largest consumer of Russian oil and further diverting supplies away from Europe. Four industry sources familiar with the situation told Reuters Rosneft was in talks with China’s state firm CNPC about the borrowing, which would echo a $25 billion deal the two companies clinched last decade.

By Vladimir Soldatkin and Denis Pinchuk MOSCOW (Reuters) -

Rosneft reported one of the largest rises in crude output among the Russian oil majors last year More crude from state-owned top producer Rosneft kept Russian oil output the highest in the world last year, ahead of Saudi Arabia, Energy Ministry data showed on Wednesday. Crude output edged up almost 1% to a new post-Soviet high of 10.37 million barrels per day (bpd), but the increase could halt this year due to depleted oil fields in West Siberia.

While the collapse in China-Japan foreign relations (and subsequently, and much more importantly, trade) over a handful of islands in the East China Sea and strategically located near potentially vast maritime oil and gas reserves is by now well-known to everyone, what may come as a surprise is that while Japan is engaged in one mini cold war over disputed rocks with China, none other than Russia tested the waters overnight so to speak, with a fighter jet flyover above yet another set of disputed islands, the Kuriles located in the far north of Japan.

SOCHI, Russia (Reuters) - BP Plc's bosses have told Russian President Vladimir

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The head of BP's Russian business is leaving Moscow the year after the British oil major failed to clinch a major Arctic strategic partnership with state-controlled Rosneft, the company said on Friday. Jeremy Huck will be replaced by BP Russia's chief financial officer, Richard Sloan, in a "planned rotation" after a three-and-a-half year assignment, a spokesman for BP in Moscow said. BP's partnership with Rosneft , signed in early 2011 in the presence of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, collapsed amid legal wrangling with the co-owners of its Russian venture TNK-BP . ...