Russia introduced tax breaks on production of hard-to-recover "tight" oil on Sunday, but the giveaway alone will not be enough just yet for the world's largest oil-producing nation to replicate the North American shale energy revolution.

Incentives of as much as $21 per barrel will transform the economics of exploration, encouraging the use of advanced drilling methods to pulverize, or "frack," vast tracts of non-porous rock into yielding up their hydrocarbon riches.

Rosneft, the state oil major that lobbied for and won the concessions, will lead the drive to tap Siberia's vast Bazhenov formation with US oil gaint ExxonMobil that enjoys the most favor in Vladimir Putin's Kremlin.

But whereas savvy, independent oil firms spearheaded the US shale boom, Russia lacks its own wildcatters. Their ranks have been thinned by the departure of two bosses from London-listed RusPetro who had pioneered the use of fracking in Siberia to now-defunct major Yukos.

"This regime will not be a catalyst for big growth in the oil sector in 2014-2015 but it may change the sector's configuration over a five-year time frame," said Alexei Kokin, an energy industry analyst at Uralsib.

Global Times