Russia's largest oil company, Rosneft, reported a net loss of eight billion rubles ($247.4 million) in the second quarter of 2012 after a 112 billion ruble ($3.812 billion) net profit to IFRS in the first quarter, on the back of falling global crude prices, higher duties and exchange rate volatility, the firm said late on Wednesday, August 1, RIA Novosti said.

The company's second quarter revenues declined 4 percent quarter on quarter, but were up 10 percent year on year to 718 billion rubles, with second quarter EBITDA fallling 46.1 percent quarter-on-quarter, and 40 percent year on year to 89 billion rubles, Rosneft said in a statement.

Rosneft President Igor Sechin said the company had taken steps to minimise volatility stemmming from exchange rate volatility, higher export duties, and falling global crude prices, and highlighted Rosneft's ability to maintain production volumes. Sechin also noted Rosneft's steps to increase its relationships with international partners to develop more difficult Russian oil production areas.

"We continued to focus on creating shareholder value by maintaining sustainable growth rates of oil production. We achieved higher-than-planned production growth at Vankor and stable production in our traditional regions. Based on our figures for the first half of 2012, we expect to exceed our initial crude production plan for the year.

"In Q2, we also took a number of strategic steps to expand partnerships with international companies in hard-to-recover oil and offshore operations and stepped up cooperation with the Russian government to create a favourable tax regime for such projects."

Rosneft's hydrocarbon production slipped 0.5 percent to 2,621 barrels of oil equivalent a day in the second quarter, but was up 2.5 percent year-on-year for the first half of 2012. Crude oil production grew 0.2 percent to 2,413 barrels per day in the second quarter with refinery throughput falling 9.7 percent quarter-on-quarter to 14.04 million tons.