In the green-to-golden steppe some 1,500 km east of Moscow, a unit of Gazprom Neft, Russia’s third-biggest oil producer, is drilling hard as it eyes a production hike of 20 percent a year, developing once-forgotten and depleted fields. That thirst for growth, a cornerstone of Gazprom Neft’s plans to increase its oil production by 8 percent to 100 million tonnes (2 million barrels per day) in 2020, shows the struggle Moscow faces in adhering to a global deal on oil output. Next week in Vienna, OPEC and non-OPEC producers, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia respectively, will discuss whether – and by how much – their joint output could be curbed to […]