MOSCOW, Aug. 12 (UPI) -- The oil arm of Russian gas company Gazprom said Tuesday it made $2.4 billion in net profits in the first half of the year, up 13 percent from 2013.
Gazprom Neft released its report for the first half of the year. On top of a boost in net profits, the company said an increase in hydrocarbon production helped drive sales up 13.9 percent year-on-year.
"Hydrocarbon production volumes in the first half of the year increased 4.1 percent year-on-year to 234.18 million barrels of oil equivalent," the company said in a statement.
The company last month announced a subsidiary started drilling into the arctic Dolginskoye field, where it estimates reserves at more than 200 million tons of oil equivalent. It June, the company started preliminary oil production from the Badra oil field in Iraq, which has estimated reserves of 3 billion barrels of oil.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the Energy Department, said in a July brief that exports of crude oil, petroleum products and natural gas accounted for 68 percent of all export revenues for Russia in 2013.
