Russia extracts 10 percent less oil than before invading Ukraine, satellite images reveal.
Russia is extracting less oil than before it invaded Ukraine, according to satellite images measuring gas flaring from Russian oil fields.
Between April 1 and 19, Russian oil production fell to 10.1 million barrels per day on average, down from eleven million in March and 11.1 million in February, according to data from the analysis company OilX, shared.
The decline between February and April represents a drop of 9%.
OilX uses images from NASA satellites to track the amount of light emitted by oil rigs when they burn off excess natural gas in a process known as flaring.
Russia extracts 10 percent less oil
Less light emission indicates that less oil is being pumped, and vice versa.
The United States has banned Russian energy imports over its invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24.
The European Union, which relies heavily on Russian oil and gas, has not followed suit, although several countries, including Germany, the bloc's top economy, have pledged to phase out their use of Russian energy.
Russian oil production between April 1 and 19 was the lowest recorded since September 2020, according to OilX.
If Russian oil production continues to fall at the current rate, the average production for the month of April will be about ten million barrels per day, OilX has said.
Russia extracts 10 percent less oil exports
Russian oil exports plunged 25% in the week to April 15, with revenues from crude shipments falling to $181 million from $240 million, according to Bloomberg, which has been the first to cite OilX's figures.
The chief economic adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Oleg Ustenko, has stated in an interview with The Observer, published on Sunday, that Ukraine will pursue Russian oil and gas traders.
Last year, Russia supplied about a third of the EU and UK's natural gas, according to the International Energy Agency.
The European Commission has proposed to reduce the EU's demand for Russian gas by two thirds by the end of 2022.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Russia is increasingly sending oil exports with "destination unknown" labels, which hides the origin of the oil from buyers who want to continue doing business with Moscow.
Russia extracts 10 percent less oil definition
The nature of oil and its origin
Petroleum is a viscous liquid of green, yellow, brown, or black colour, and that is constituted by different hydrocarbons, that is, by compounds formed by carbon and hydrogen atoms in varying quantities. No two oil fields have ever been found that have the same composition, since, along with hydrocarbons, there are often other oxygenated, nitrogenous, and other organic compounds with elements such as sulphur, nickel, or vanadium.
Black gold, as oil is metaphorically called, has its origin in the decomposition of tiny aquatic organisms that lived in the ancient seas of the Earth millions of years ago, when humans had not yet appeared.
At that time, the surface of the planet did not have the same characteristics as the current one. Pangea is the name by which the only large terrestrial plate that existed is known, on which all the continents were gathered. When these animal and vegetable microorganisms died and fell to the bottom of large bodies of water, successive layers of inorganic sediments - sands and clays - were deposited on top, burying them deeper and deeper. The high pressure of the layers of earth, the elevated temperatures, and the action of bacteria in the absence of oxygen - that is, in an anaerobic environment - was slowly transforming the organic remains into what we know today as crude oil. The process of decomposition of organic matter and the formation of oil takes about 10 to 100 million years.
A characteristic property of oil is the miscibility of all its fractions, due to which it forms a continuous organic phase. On the other hand, hydrocarbons are poorly miscible in water, and since they are lighter, they always form a layer on their surface.
Oil does not form large underground lakes but fills the pores and holes of rocks of sedimentary origin, as happens with water in aquifers or in a sponge. Its liquid nature means that it tends to migrate vertically or horizontally, taking advantage of the permeability of the rocky layers that it encounters in its path. When that happens, the oil advances until it reaches the surface - the light products that compose it evaporate and the rest oxidizes, giving rise to asphalts-, or forms a deposit when it is trapped in an impermeable layer through which it cannot pass.
This great mobility makes it often difficult to know where the oil was formed, since we can find it in all geological strata. The most frequent correspond to the Cenozoic (65-0,01 million years ago), followed by the Palaeozoic (590-248 million years ago), the Mesozoic era (248-65 million) and the Preconiano (more than five hundred million years ago), although all of them have originated during the course of a long evolutionary history, in which they have acted factors petrographic, sedimentological, structural, paleontological, etc
# Russia extracts 10 percent less oil #
