Russia's oil output declines 1.3% to 880 mln bbls in Q1

MOSCOW, April 15 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's oil output (including gas condensate) declined 1.3%, year-on-year, in January-March 2009 to 120 million metric tons (880 million barrels), the country's top statistics body said on Wednesday.

At the same time, oil output in March increased 0.5%, year-on-year, and 11.2%, month on month, the State Statistics Service (Rosstat) said.

Primary oil refining declined 1.1%, year-on-year, in January-March 2009 to 58 million metric tons (425 million barrels), Rosstat said.

Production of vehicle gasoline grew 0.5% to 9.1 million metric tons (66.7 million barrels), with diesel fuel declining 3.5% to 16.9 million metric tons (124 million barrels) and heating oil dropping 4.6% to 16.4 million metric tons (120 million barrels) in the reporting period, Rosstat said.

Russia's Economic Development Ministry expects oil output in Russia to drop 1.1% to 482 million metric tons (3.5 billion barrels) and oil exports to fall 2.5% to 237 million metric tons (1.7 billion barrels) in 2009.

Russia's oil output declined 0.7%, year-on-year, in 2008 to 488 million metric tons (3.6 billion barrels).