Russia's second largest oil producer, LUKOIL, saw its crude oil output fall 1 percent to 96 million tons in 2010 on higher domestic deposit depletion, the company said on Thursday. LUKOIL also said its hydrocarbon reserves grew by 123 million tons during 2010 as six new oil fields were discovered in Russia's Perm region, Uzbekistan, Ghana and Egypt. "As compared with 2009, the oil production somewhat dropped, which was due to the depletion of the western Siberian reserves," the company said in a statement. In 2009 LUKOIL produced 97 million tons of oil. The producer's 2010 domestic output, according to Energy Ministry data, was 90.1 million tons. In an interview with Reuters in October, the company's vice president said output will continue to decline within Russia and that nearly all of LUKOIL's production increases will come from foreign assets, including those in Africa and Iraq. The firm also said on Thursday that its four wells for its offshore Yury Korchagin field in the Caspian Sea were pumping oil at a rate of 600 tons per day. The first tanker with oil from the Korchagin field was loaded in October. During 2010 LUKOIL refined 66 million tons of crude oil up from 63 million tons in 2009.
