After loss-making years in 2023 and 2024 and a modest recovery in profits in 2025, Gazprom is attempting to demonstrate new growth opportunities by announcing the launch of oil production at the Chona group of fields in Eastern Siberia. At the same time, representatives of the more flexible and investment-attractive Novatek acknowledge that Russia’s gas industry faces the risk of a significant production shortfall in the future.
According to Gazprom Neft, the company has begun commercial oil production at the Chona group of fields in Eastern Siberia. The project is viewed by the Kremlin as one element of Russia’s continued reorientation of oil exports toward Asian markets. The main production infrastructure for the project was built over approximately two years.
However, in the context of Russia’s overall oil sector, the new asset remains relatively small: expected output is up to 2 million tonnes of oil per year, while Russia’s total annual oil production exceeds 500 million tonnes.
At the same time, Russia’s gas industry is showing increasingly alarming signs. Aleksandr Yazkov, Director of Field Development at Novatek, stated that by 2050 Russia could fall short of its own strategic gas production targets by 450 billion cubic meters unless the government introduces additional incentives for developing hard-to-recover reserves.
Under Russia’s Energy Strategy, the Kremlin aims to increase gas production to 1.107 trillion cubic meters annually by the middle of the century. By comparison, output in 2025 was estimated at 663 billion cubic meters. However, even Russia’s largest gas companies acknowledge that these plans may prove unrealistic without substantial state support.
Novatek forecasts that the production gap could reach 30 billion cubic meters as early as the beginning of the 2030s, grow to 90 billion cubic meters by 2036, and expand to a record 450 billion cubic meters by 2050.
The industry’s key challenge is the depletion of traditional fields in the Nadym-Pur-Taz region, which has served as the backbone of Russian gas production for decades. Reserve depletion there has already reached 56%, forcing companies to move toward increasingly complex and costly projects in Yamal, Gydan, Eastern Siberia, and the Arctic shelf.
Western sanctions and technological restrictions remain an additional challenge for Russia’s energy sector. Novatek openly acknowledges that wells requiring horizontal drilling and multi-stage hydraulic fracturing are unprofitable under the current tax regime.
As a result, even the launch of new oil projects in Eastern Siberia does not alter the broader trend: Russia’s easily accessible reserves are gradually being depleted, while further production growth will require massive investment, tax incentives, and advanced technologies, access to which is becoming increasingly restricted for Russia.
