Abstract: | Russia's oil sector is critical to the country's overall economic development at present and may affect the whole Russian economy in the next several years. Nevertheless, like all other energy sectors in the Russian Federation, it faces a number of problems, including low domestic prices, a poor regulatory framework, little competition, underinvestment and environmental failure. There is little know‐ledge of the real needs and problems of the sector, including high production costs, weak transport infrastructure, low investment and obsolete technical equipment, but instead there is permanent political pressure to increase the tax burden. In this context the analysis presented in the article contributes to ongoing discussions and presents a number of numerical estimations relating to the current situation of the oil sector in Russia, including overall sector revenue, cost estimates, total tax burden, present level of investment etc., and simulations of the situation in the sector under different future oil price scenarios. |