Russia produced an average of 9.82 million barrels a day of crude oil and condensate in August, the news agency Interfax reported Tuesday, citing Ministry of Industry and Energy statistics.
That is up 0.4% on the month, and down 0.9% from August 2007. Oil output has been falling against year-earlier figures since February.
Interfax cited data from the TsDU-TEK department of the Industry and Energy Ministry as saying that the country produced 41.254 million metric tons of oil in the month.
In the first eight months of 2008 as a whole, Russia produced 325.15million tons of oil and condensate, an average of 9.768million barrels a day, down 1.0% from the corresponding period last year, Interfax reported.
The country's top oil companies have struggled to keep production at the level of previous years because output from their mature fields in West Siberia is stagnating. The bulk of Russia's oil is extracted there.
In July, Russia's Economy Ministry revised down its forecast for this year's oil output by at least 3 million metric tons.
The ministry, which earlier forecast production in the range of 495 million-500 million tons, now expects total output to reach 492 million tons, or 9.88 million barrels per day.
Despite a 0.4% growth month-on-month, UBS investment bank said August's figures were weak, as it had expected more production to come from Russian majors after a significant acceleration of drilling activity,
"This indicates that the operating environment is deteriorating and that drilling is becoming less and less efficient," said Dmitry Loukashov, an analyst at UBS.
"On the other hand, it is obvious that Russian oil companies are committed to restoring production at any cost, and we expect that some measures will be taken by the government to reverse the decline," Loukashov added.
Russia's overall oil output in 2007 totaled 491.48 million tons, averaging 9.87 million barrels a day. That was up 2.3% on the previous year's figure.
The agency gave the following breakdown for August production by individual company. All figures are given in both million metric tons and in barrels a day.