(Adds details of debt, background)

MOSCOW, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Russia’s top oil producer Rosneft has the resources to meet its 2016 debt obligations of $13.7 billion in full this year, the company told Reuters on Thursday, as the value of the rouble against the U.S. dollar and euro has plummeted.

Rosneft, under Western sanctions over Moscow’s role in the Ukraine crisis which limit its ability to borrow on global markets, bought TNK-BP, its smaller competitor, for $55 billion in 2013.

Rosneft said on Thursday it had a total of around $23 billion in free cash and short-term financial assets as of Sept-end, 2015, enough to meet its debt obligations this year.

Rosneft, which accounts for 40 percent of Russian oil output, said last year it had paid international banks $7.9 billion in the third quarter of 2015.

The company’s net debt was down by 40 percent to $24.5 billion in the third quarter, quarter-on-quarter, thanks to the forward payments by its clients worth more than 1 trillion roubles ($11.9 billion).

Rosneft did not elaborate on Thursday whether it expected more such forward payments this year.

The company raised 625 billion roubles in rouble bonds at the end of 2014, in a deal described later by the central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina as “non-transparent, unclear to the market and... an additional factor of volatility.”

Rosneft said at the time it did not use the funds raised to buy foreign currency.