Country insight – Russia
Russia’s natural gas production reached a new high growing by 8.2% (over one-third of global growth) in 2017. Russia remained the world’s largest oil and gas exporter
Fast facts
1 Oil production stayed put at 11.3 Mb/d, and accounted for 12.2% of the global total; Russia remained the second largest (after the US) gas producer with 17.3% of global output
2 Russian oil exports grew by 3.1% (to 8.6 Mb/d) and accounted for 12.7% of the global total; gas exports grew by 7.9% (to 231 bcm) accounting for 25.9% of global gas exports growth
3 Primary energy consumption (5.2% of the global total), increased by 1.5%; energy intensity exceeded the global average by 66%; primary energy production accounted for 10.4% of the global total
Growth in Russia’s energy consumption
Share of global energy consumption
Growth in Russia’s gas production
Growth in Russia’s coal production
Projections
- Russia’s energy consumption grew by 1.5% (+8.7 mtoe). Russia remained the fourth largest energy consumer in the world (behind China, the US and India).
- Oil consumption grew by 1.0% (+31 Kb/d) in 2017, following resumption of economic growth and growth in car sales.
- Gas consumption grew slightly faster: 1.4% (+4.6 bcm) primarily on a colder winter (2016-17) and higher technical needs of the gas industry itself; gas-fired power generation grew by just 0.4%.
- Coal consumption grew by 3.8% largely due to higher use in power generation (+3.0%).
- Gas remained Russia’s leading fuel with 52.3% of primary energy consumption, followed by oil (21.9%) and coal (13.2%).
- Energy intensity (the amount of energy required per unit of GDP) stayed flat in 2017 and was 66% higher than the world average.
- Russia’s CO2 emissions increased by 1.3% in 2017. Russia’s share of global emissions (4.6%) remained below its share of global energy consumption.
- Oil output was flat in 2017 (-0.1%) compared to the 10-year average growth of 1.3%. In contrast, gas output grew strongly: 8.2% (vs a 10-year trend decline of -0.3%). Coal output (+6.7%) also grew significantly above trend (+3.2%).
- Hydro declined by 0.5% (vs +0.6% trend), while nuclear (+3.6%) and renewables (+8.7%) grew above trend (+2.3% and 8.0%, respectively).
- Renewables were the fastest-growing fuel but contributed only 0.04% to Russia’s primary energy consumption; in comparison, nuclear accounted for 6.6%.
- Russia accounted for 10.4% of global primary energy production. The most important contributions to global output were for gas (17.3%), oil (12.6%), nuclear (7.7%) and coal (5.5%).
- Russia remained world’s largest exporter of both oil (12.7% of the total) and natural gas (20.4%).
- Russia’s possesses the largest gas reserves in the world (35 Tcm, 18.1% of the total) and ranks sixth for oil reserves (106 Billion barrels, 6.3% of the global total).