Russia overtook Saudia Arabia again in March to become the world's single producer of oil pumping an average of 10.927mn barrels a day, Rosstat data show, reports RIA News.

The two countries are constantly leapfrogging each other in this race. Saudi Arabia in March extracted 10.120mn barrels a day in the same period. In February, Saudi was ahead of Russia, which was also extracting 10.120mn barrels per day.

Most of Russia's gains in production have been coming not from the big companies but the small- and medium-sized producers.

In general, the Opec countries in March produced 32.251mn barrels per day, of which Iraq produced 4.199 million barrels.

All the main Opec countries have been increasing their production and plan to continue to do so, according to reports. Opec members are due to meet on June 2, but the chances of them announcing a production cut or even coordinating their action are very low. Russia has said that it won't attend the meeting even at expert level.

The volume of oil and gas condensate in Russia in January-March 2016 amounted to 62mn tons, which is 4.4% more than in January-March 2015 oil production, including gas condensate, amounted to 138mn tons in Russia, which is 4.7% more compared to January-March 2015.

The share of oil exports in total Russian exports in the first quarter was 23% of total exports and 39.3% of energy products. That compares with 25.2% and 38.5% respectively in the same period a year earlier.