The head of Russian Gazprom Neft said on Saturday he sees no need for additional oil supply cuts by OPEC+ oil producers, days before the group is due to meet on output policy.
He remarked that there was a slight surplus in the global oil market.
OPEC+ have agreed to voluntary output cuts totaling about 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd) for the first quarter, led by Saudi Arabia rolling over a 1 million bpd voluntary reduction.
OPEC+ producers are scheduled to hold a meeting of a key ministerial panel on Feb 1 and group sources have said that it will likely decide its oil production levels for April and beyond in the coming weeks, Reuters reported.
"OPEC+ has already decided on cuts, cuts actually start now, in January, on the one hand. On the other hand, we are approaching the spring season, a seasonal increase in oil demand. This will happen soon enough, in two months," Gazprom Neft CEO Alexander Dyukov told reporters.
"In my opinion, at the moment there is no need (to adjust the OPEC+ deal)."
Dyukov also said that the company plans to increase oil refining volumes and hydrocarbon output in 2024, without providing figures, while Gazprom Neft's investments are seen unchanged this year.
Russia has reached oil and oil products voluntary export cuts of 500,000 barrels per day in January, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Saturday, adding that the global oil market is balanced.
He said that Russian exports of oil to India are going according to plan, commenting after Reuters reported that about dozen tankers, loaded with 10 million barrels of Russian Sokol grade crude oil, have been stranded off the coast of South Korea for weeks.
Separately, Russian Energy Minister Nikolai Shulginov said on Saturday that the country's oil production will likely stay broadly unchanged this year, the RIA news agency reported.
Russian oil and gas condensate production declined slightly last year to 530 million metric tons (10.6 million barrels per day).
Interfax news agency also quoted Shulginov as saying that Russia has cut gasoline exports following an incident at the NORSI oil refinery.
The outage has sparked concerns about potential gasoline shortages across the country and there have been media reports suggesting that the government was considering imposing an export ban on the fuel, as it did last autumn.
Novak said on Saturday that repair work on Lukoil's NORSI oil refinery will take at least a month or a month and a half, TASS news agency reported. Equipment at the refinery was damaged in an accident early this week.
"The company is assessing technical solutions for restoration, assessing the possibility of quickly restoring equipment; this will determine how long it will take. That's at least around 1-1.5 months," Novak was quoted as saying by TASS.
The damage to a catalytic cracking unit at the Norsi facility slashed gasoline output. Russia’s oil-processing volumes declined further in the first half of January due to the incident.
- Russian gas
Russia is ready to hold talks with the European Union on natural gas supplies as a transit deal with Ukraine expires at the end of 2024, Novak was quoted as saying by several news agencies on Saturday.
Under a five-year deal agreed between Moscow and Kyiv in 2019, Russia is exporting gas to Europe via Ukraine and pays Ukraine for the usage of its pipeline network.
"If the other party EU wishes, we are ready to discuss. So far we don't see such a desire," Novak was quoted as saying by the RIA news agency.
A European Union official on Friday declined to speculate on whether the Ukraine transit deal would be extended beyond the end of 2024, but said the bloc was assessing all scenarios to ensure its preparedness.
