OAO Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil producer, said first-quarter profit fell 35 percent, hurt by last year’s decline in crude prices. Net income dropped to 56 billion rubles ($1 billion) from 86 billion rubles a year earlier, the Moscow-based company said in a statement on its website. That topped the 36.5 billion-ruble average estimate of nine analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. The state-owned company has sought to cut costs while keeping output as it repays debt from the $55 billion 2013 acquisition of Russia’s third-largest oil producer, TNK-BP. U.S. and European sanctions in response to Russia’s support for separatists in Ukraine have complicated Rosneft’s task by curbing its access to debt and equipment. The difficulty compounded by a more than 50 percent slump in the average oil price in the first three months of 2015 compared with the year-earlier period, Rosneft said. Free cash flow, adjusted for supply prepayments, fell to […]