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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Sechin, Rosneft is one of Russia’s biggest companies. The state has a stake in this company too, and so we are not indifferent to the situation of what is one of our biggest taxpayers. We are nearly at the end of March and you have probably summed up last year’s results by now. Let’s start with this.

Rosneft President and CEO Igor Sechin: Thank you, Mr President.

Yes, the crisis on the world markets and the fall in oil prices has made for a difficult situation over these past years, but I am happy to be able to tell you the company has coped with this market instability.

We will soon have our company’s public report of its activities ready. I can tell you that last year, we succeeded in increasing hydrocarbon production a little, by 1 percent, and produced a total of 254 million tonnes of liquid hydrocarbons.

In order to achieve this result, we increased drilling operations by 30 percent in 2015. This takes into account the fact that a number of factors had a restraining effect on our work in 2014. We have resolved the problem of a shortage of drilling services and have developed our own drilling services, and this meant that we were able to increase our drilling result by 30 percent last year.

Vladimir Putin: Who did the work for you and who is involved now – Schlumberger?

Igor Sechin: Mr President, Rosneft’s own subdivisions take care of 56 percent of the drilling services, and the rest is contracted out mostly to Russian producers: Eriell and other big companies.

Vladimir Putin: Very good.

Igor Sechin: This enables us to maintain our own service on the market and make use of the current situation too to get our colleagues more effectively involved in drilling service contracts. What’s more, the company processed around 96.7 million tonnes of oil at its own refineries last year.

Vladimir Putin: In Russia and abroad.

Igor Sechin: Yes, here and abroad. We processed 84 million tonnes in Russia, and slightly more than 12 million tonnes abroad.

Our reserves replacement coefficient stood at 168 percent. In this respect, we carried out successful geological exploration operations. We have largely completed the transition to producing Euro-5 petroleum products. To be more precise, all of our companies are already producing top-category products now.

Mr President, our collected assets and experience make it possible for us to increase our investment programme this year. It will be approximately 30 percent higher this year than in 2015, and comes to around 1 trillion rubles.

This will create new jobs and development opportunities, especially in Eastern Siberia, we plan to bring new facilities on line in two-three years, when the market stabilises.

Vladimir Putin: One trillion, is this the investment figure for the year?

Igor Sechin: Yes, it is. In 2015, the figure was around 660 billion, and this year it will reach around a trillion.

Vladimir Putin: Very good.

Igor Sechin: Mr President, we understand our responsibility for supplying oil products to the domestic market, and for bringing in export revenue. Last year, in order to stabilise the country’s currency market, we sold around $45 billion through the Central Bank’s system.

Vladimir Putin: Good.

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