What is LUKOIL-Western Siberia doing to replenish the resource base?
The last five years have, indeed, demonstrated a stable tendency for hydrocarbon production to fall. The rate of decline reached 6-8%. That was the trend. We have carried out active work to organize a balanced development system for the company. It was important to properly adjust the company’s strategy and balance it in terms of investment projects commissioning priority and ranking in such a way as to ensure, at one and same level of operating and capital costs, a stable level of or even a rise in production. As a result, we have designed a medium-term development strategy for LUKOIL-Western Siberia. Its first stage provided for stabilizing hydrocarbon production volumes. This task has been fulfilled: over the last six months of 2009, the company’s production volume did not change. In recent years, we have also been quite active in purchasing licenses for hydrocarbon exploration and production in the Khanty-Mansi autonomous Area. This will allow the Company, in the medium term (3-5 y
