Russia’s largest oil producer, Rosneft, expects oil prices to average between $40 and $43 per barrel next year, and is preparing for such prices, Rosneft’s CEO Igor Sechin told TV channel Rossiya 24 in an interview broadcast on Monday. Last week, Sechin was quoted as saying that the recent rise in oil prices was due to a weak dollar , instead of efforts by OPEC to combat the global crude supply glut. Sechin’s oil price forecast is basically in line with Russia’s economic estimates from earlier this year. At the beginning of June, Russia’s Economy Minister Maxim Oreshkin said that Russia was “actually ready to live forever at oil prices $40 or below,” as oil at US$40 is the current underlying key assumption of Russia’s economic policies. A couple of weeks later, Bank of Russia Governor Elvira Nabiullina said that Russia’s central bank was keeping its oil price forecast […]