10 myths of the Russian oil industry

1. In Russia the oil fuel price should be low. The argument is usually presented data on the cost of one liter of gasoline in the oil-producing countries. For example, in Iran liter Au-95 is 2.4 rubles / liter, while Venezuela does 47 cents. But, first, the absolute expression of the price of fuel does nothing for the analysis. Prices for petroleum products must correlate with purchasing power. Second, Russia is a totally different logic of pricing. The tax on petroleum component is dominant in the price of a liter. Moreover, the tax share from year to year will increase: the government has adopted a program increase of excise duties on fuel at the rate of price rise on average by 1 ruble per liter in 2012 and 2013. Today the average price of the navigation gasoline AI-92 is 25.4 rubles / liter. Of these, almost 21 rubles - this cost (27%) plus taxes (55%). Thus, under the current gasoline tax burden can not be less than 21 rubles per liter. 2. "Oil Curse of Russia." Oil and gas revenues is half filled with the Russian budget. So what is a curse rather priceless gift. That's just dispose of in a businesslike competently with this gift of fate, we have not learned. Like the heirs of incalculable wealth, fallen on their heads, authorities do not know his worth and literally squandering of unnecessary projects. Fabulous oil revenues go like water into sand and corrupt government officials, atrophy ability to realistically assess the economic situation, energy-consuming search. This is where the present curse of Russia: a not-ability or unwillingness to turn oil revenues in the asset growth rather than a withdrawal of looted wealth in offshore zones. For Norway, with an annual production of 120 million tons of oil does not become a commodity curse. 3. The industry established market relations and competition. For twenty years after the privatization of the oil industry in Russia, the USSR had not developed market relations in the oil industry. The reasons are many: the architecture industry, inherited from the Soviet Union, particularly privatization in the nineties and the personal preferences of the leaders of the country. As a result, almost all of the production, processing and marketing in the hands of seven large, vertically integrated petroleum companies tyanyh (VICs), which control 86% of the production, processing 77% and 50% of retail sales stations. When the government came up that the price of oil purchases for the army under direct contracts exceed reasonable limits nye, came to organize the team for trading oil on the domestic market to gain market indicators. As directed by the government in 2006 established the St. Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange (SPIMEX). Oilers took stock trading "in arms" in every possible way to sabotage it. FAS had directives oblige them to sell through the exchange of at least 15% of the product produced at Russian refineries. There remains the question of how it will promote openness and transparency of the price indicators. Even if the stock exchange will be sold 100% of domestic consumption, vertically integrated companies, regardless of the number of goods sold, the price will be put out of consideration equal profits of export and domestic sales, if necessary agreeing with each other. 4. FAS successfully fighting monopoly vertically integrated companies. In the petroleum industry activity FAS resulted in billions of dollars in lawsuits against vertically integrated companies for dominance in the regional markets and oil cartels. Only in the second wave of lawsuits from oil companies fined a total of 20.7 billion rubles-lei. However, repeated proposals to introduce a formulary restriction FAS Russian fuel prices on the basis of equal to the export or legally split the vertically integrated companies in the mining, refining and marketing organization, which would clarify the structure of liters of fuel prices, do not find political support in the Russian government. In reality, leaving the FAS powers "bully" - monitoring and enforcement of fines - the government is blocking its standard-setting activities in the oil industry. 5. Nationalisation will lower fuel prices. The oil industry is nationalized. At two of the largest vertically integrated oil companies - "Rosneft" and "Gazprom oil" - the state-controlled, accounting for 35% of total Russian oil production and refining. But from these companies that is not observed with the public-tial-tion approach to pricing and marketing policy in general. They, like other oil-tyaniki, sabotage stock trading, shamelessly bullied prices and focus on the surplus. When you create a "Rosneft" and "Gazprom oil" was assumed that the state can regulate them through pricing in the domestic market, creating competition for purely commercial VICs. But this has not happened and will happen even if the oil industry is completely nationalized. 6. Foreign investors rush into the Russian oil-tepererabotku. Even Russian companies do not invest in almost modernization, and especially in the construction of new refineries. Over twenty years of the new Russia was built only a modern refinery with a depth of processing up to 97% and a capacity of 7 million tons a year - "Taneko" Nizhnekamsk, and then the means of "Tatneft" and the government of Tatarstan. Case of the "Yukos affair", the struggle over the Sakhalin projects for a long time discouraged to invest. The collapse of the deal between "Rosneft" and BP confirms low investment rating of Russia. The government is behaving as if oil refining (or any raw materials) - not innovative, not-tech and knowledge-intensive business is not. The result - a complete removal of excess revenues, coupled with lack of security on the property kills any long-term investment. This has already led to the fact that a number of projects we are forced to seek technology to the West. Without them, go to the depth of processing 90-95% of Russia can not. 7. Help! Oil ends! Assumption is based on advanced by Academician Ivan Gubkin theory of the origin of oil buried for millions of years of organic (mainly plankton) of the material. As a result of prolonged exposure to pressure, temperature, and oil was formed. This approach assumes that the finiteness of the resource. 8. Oil will never run dry! According to the less well-known theory of Vasily Sokolov Russian geologist, petroleum hydrocarbons formed from the space (protometana) in the period when the planet was in the fiery liquid. As a result of long processes protometan in the planet's interior is converted into nefteobraznuyu phase and as extrusion to the surface layers of the planet in sedimentary rocks saturated with the remains of organic life, and other chemical compounds and elements from the periodic table. Like, why are the oil and debris and even bacteria live at depths of 2 thousand meters. Leaving the scientific disputes to scientists. But in the commercial world the seventh and eighth myths govern grants the oil business. Like the experienced players, any of these myths through brainwashing of public opinion, along with the other (global warming, global cooling, etc.) becomes the ace of trumps at the right time and in appropriate circumstances. 9. Dependence on oil, the USSR collapsed. In 1986, really was a sharp decline in world oil prices from $ 28 to $ 15 per barrel. But the consequences for the Soviet economy from this were not so fatal, as is usually portrayed. First of all, of the decline in prices could offset the buildup of physical volume of exports (from 117 million tons in 1985 to 144 million in 1988). Second, more than half the exports of "black gold" fell on the country's socialist bloc, which had a system of pricing that is tied to oil prices on the world market over the preceding 5 years. The drop in prices prompted a destruction of the built world socialist system and its builder - the Soviet Union. Hypotheses about the causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union put forward a thousand, but the oil has nothing to do with it. 10. Speculators to blame for high oil prices. Speculative component in the price of oil is the place to be. However, base prices remain balance "demand - a proposal" and the cost of production. In periods of rapid growth in oil prices were falling all bumps on the heads of the speculators. And during the fall of the public forgets about their existence. In fact, speculation in futures is like playing the "guessing game". But in order to predict future oil prices, speculators have created the most powerful, the most rigorous diagnostic system of the world economy, consisting of dozens of options - from oil to the conditions of business environment indicators. Most speculators are trying to capitalize on the natural course of changes in market conditions in oil prices than the ability to change processes in the global economy, geopolitics, or affect natural disasters. Naturally, the grandees of speculative trading creates information noise in a positive light for them, but no more. Record in 2008, when oil prices crept to $ 150 per barrel in the mortgage boom in the U.S., and then collapsed after the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, was not caused by speculators. Just as the 2011 record of $ 125 per barrel due to revolutions in the Middle East, not speculation. It is not disputed annual growth in oil consumption. It is not disputed and the finiteness of the light (cheap in production) of oil, and we know that the new oil is given more and more difficult.