Russia might never hit the record oil production levels seen in 2019, a government paper cited by Kommersant outlines. Russian oil production might never recover to pre-coronavirus levels, the country’s Energy Ministry has forecast, according to the Kommersant business paper. In a strategy document outlining prospects for Russia’s critical oil and gas industry, the government said its “base case” — or most likely — scenario, is that Russia’s oil production will never again hit the record levels recorded in 2019. In the last full year before the pandemic, Russia produced 560 million tons of oil — equivalent to 11.3 million barrels a day. But output dropped for the first time in more than a decade in 2020 as Russia agreed significant production cuts with Saudi Arabia and other members of the OPEC cartel in a bid to support oil prices at the start of the pandemic — pushing production […]