More oil to come from Russia

New forecasts say the country will defy the gloom and keep adding to production

Russia’s upstream is the scene of another battleground—for analysts who take a much more optimistic view of supply than the market consensus. The country’s oil production has been expected to start falling under the strain of maturing fields, a weak oil price and the lingering impact of sanctions. But Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, sees it differently. It expects growth in Russian output to accelerate, hitting 11.7m barrels a day by 2018, a rise of almost 0.6m b/d from 2015. Meanwhile, Russia’s VTB Capital, another investment bank, said in a recent note, The relentless ascent, that it expects 1.3% growth this year and a further 2.5% in 2017. In contrast, the International Energy Agency,