{"id":151174,"date":"2026-02-19T18:00:56","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T16:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/?post_type=news&#038;p=151174"},"modified":"2026-02-18T20:18:55","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T18:18:55","slug":"naftovi-kompaniyi-rosiyi-zmusheni-skorochuvaty-obsyagy-burinnya","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/news\/novosti\/naftovi-kompaniyi-rosiyi-zmusheni-skorochuvaty-obsyagy-burinnya\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian Oil Companies Forced to Cut Drilling Activity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-start=\"132\" data-end=\"479\">The collapse in prices for Russian crude is undermining company profitability, forcing producers to drill and extract less oil. In particular, drilling activity fell by 16% in December 2025 compared with December 2024. Overall, it declined by 3.4% over the year, according to industry statistics cited by <span class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"><span class=\"whitespace-normal\">Bloomberg<\/span><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"481\" data-end=\"762\">A total of 29,140 kilometers of wells were drilled during the year \u2014 a lower figure was recorded only in pre-war 2021, when the global economy was recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and <span class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"><span class=\"whitespace-normal\">OPEC+<\/span><\/span> significantly restricted output to support prices.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"764\" data-end=\"938\">Meanwhile, oil production fell for the second consecutive month in January, reaching 9.246 million barrels per day \u2014 now 328,000 barrels below Russia\u2019s allocated OPEC+ quota.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"940\" data-end=\"1077\">Brent crude prices have risen 13% since the start of the year amid growing geopolitical tensions, primarily linked to Iran and Venezuela.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"1079\" data-end=\"1255\">Russia has accumulated about 150 million barrels of oil on tankers that have left the country but were not delivered to buyers who refused the cargoes \u2014 mainly Indian refiners.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"1257\" data-end=\"1413\">The global price increase has not helped Russia, as the discount on its crude grades has continued to widen, now reaching $27\u201329 per barrel for Urals crude.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"1415\" data-end=\"1673\">Many of Russia\u2019s oil fields are becoming depleted. To maintain daily output at roughly 9.2\u20139.4 million barrels, companies need to drill between 26,000 and 29,000 kilometers of wells annually. If drilling continues to decline, production will inevitably fall.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"1675\" data-end=\"1952\">An additional negative factor for the industry is the bankruptcy of smaller oil firms. According to <span class=\"hover:entity-accent entity-underline inline cursor-pointer align-baseline\"><span class=\"whitespace-normal\">Rosstat<\/span><\/span>, half of the companies engaged in oil and gas extraction recorded losses totaling 575 billion rubles between January and November 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":151175,"menu_order":0,"template":"","newscat":[9],"newstag":[],"issues":[],"class_list":["post-151174","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","newscat-novosti"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/151174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"newscat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newscat?post=151174"},{"taxonomy":"newstag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newstag?post=151174"},{"taxonomy":"issues","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ldaily.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issues?post=151174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}