Just monitoring compliance with production sharing agreements would cost millions of budget dollars. Russia can be calm about its natural resources. According to Prime Minister Kasyanov, foreign companies should work in...

Monitoring compliance with production sharing agreements alone would cost millions of budget dollars

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Russia can be calm about its natural resources. According to Prime Minister Kasyanov, foreign companies must operate under the national tax regime, competing fairly with Russian oilmen. Profit from the sale of the risen in price "black gold" will remain at home. The "oil" lobby pushing for a production sharing law has been failing after failure lately.

According to experts, the PSA law, which leaves the country only a small part of the oil produced by the investor, will most likely be amended. The development of subsoil on the terms of production sharing will not become the main rule of domestic oil production. Today we can sum up the preliminary results.

State control of agreements

What threatens the transfer of the domestic "oil industry" to the PSA, showed the very first experiences of its application. We already wrote about the scandals associated with the Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-2 projects in the last issue of Novaya Gazeta. The first of the "Sakhalins" did not work at full capacity, and the second, mercilessly polluting the unique nature of the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bOkhotsk, pumps out oil with might and main, giving Russia only ten percent of it. It is clear that such an experience of using the PSA can hardly be called inspiring.

Until recently, officials did not dare to question the expediency of the very idea of ​​production sharing agreements. With the combined efforts of Western and domestic lobbyists, the PSA law was about to bring the Russian oil industry into a kind of “internal offshore”. The way out of the situation seemed to be quite traditional: to strengthen control over the obligations of investors.

State-owned companies were supposed to monitor the observance of the interests of the state in the preparation and implementation of production sharing agreements. By a special order of the Government of the Russian Federation dated August 30, 2001, Zarubezhneft and Rosneft were appointed such authorized organizations. It was planned to finance them in accordance with additional agreements to the contract, which should specify the terms of reference and its specific price. At the same time, the money, in theory, was transferred on the basis of acceptance certificates of work: “trust, but verify” in a ministerial way.

True, the joint work did not work. The General Agreement “On carrying out work and rendering services in the field of preparation and implementation of production sharing agreements in relation to subsoil plots and hydrocarbon deposits” was signed by the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia only with Rosneft. The state unitary enterprise RVO Zarubezhneft was not satisfied with the scope of powers, as well as the right of the ministry to control the conclusion of contracts for the performance of work with subcontractors. True, the company still presented an estimate of the estimated costs.

But Rosneft did not have any objections to its own powers. The oilmen, without waiting for the approval of the PSA law, quickly drew up an estimate and submitted it for payment. Having calculated how much the salary of state specialists in the division of national resources alone would cost the country, controllers from the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade were confused. Judging by the figures put down in the estimate, the oilmen simply decided to earn extra money, and they did it in the most shameless way.

The result of a thorough study of the needs and state opportunities declared by oilmen was the protocol of the meeting of the commission of the government of the Russian Federation on the issue of PSA dated June 11, 2002 "On the procedure for financing authorized organizations." It came to the editors of Novaya Gazeta in the form of a document from the government apparatus, which occupied eight pages of the official letterhead of the First Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Economic Development.

The check, please

At first, ministerial officials were embarrassed by a mere trifle: the data in the cost estimates were presented in a general form - without decoding the articles and the methodology for calculating costs. Meticulous clerks of the Ministry of Economic Development simply could not understand how much and what kind of work the authorized Rosneft was planning to perform in the coming 2003.

The estimate was turned back - for detailing. And at the same time, the leaders of the Ministry of Economic Development made an official request to the Ministry of Finance with a request "to express an opinion on the advisability of financing the activities of authorized organizations at the expense of the federal budget on the basis of the presented cost estimates ..."

Authorized companies presented a breakdown of the estimate for work with still unborn PSA in a week. Judging by the payroll, employees of the newly established departments of Rosneft and Zarubezhneft should have received much more than their counterparts from state departments. For example, the staff of the PSA department of Rosneft consists of twenty employees, whose total salary should be 26,615.4 thousand rubles (782.8 thousand US dollars) per year. And if we also take into account the unified social tax, then the state budget expenses for the maintenance of a brigade of full-time specialists in the division of production should have exceeded one million “green”.

According to ministerial specialists, this is too much. Thus, the salary of employees of the department for the preparation and implementation of the PSA of the Ministry of Economic Development is only 951.48 thousand rubles (27.985 thousand US dollars) per year.

The minutes of the meeting of the government commission states that “an analysis of the work schedule for 2003 provided by Rosneft Oil Company OJSC shows that most of the functions performed by the authorized organization duplicate the tasks of the departments of federal ministries dealing with PSA issues, or consist in transferring volumes work to subcontractors (according to the estimate of Rosneft Oil Company, this is about 60%)”.

Social package for the controller

In addition to wages, the estimate took into account travel expenses and expenses for the training of new specialists of the PSA department. Thus, Rosneft's accountants planned to spend 1,308 thousand rubles ($38.5 thousand) on business trips in a year. Of course, five hundred rubles a day in Russia and $150 abroad is not God knows what, but these amounts exceed the established norm by several times. Moreover, 130 thousand rubles (3.8 thousand dollars) a year "for negotiations."

The oil workers planned to spend a mere trifle for the year on renting premises, land, communications and computer equipment - 3,452.5 thousand rubles (101.8 thousand US dollars). True, they deciphered only part of the costs, therefore, as the same protocol of the commission on PSA issues says, “it is not possible to assess the necessity and validity of the costs under this item. Nevertheless, the inclusion of these costs in the estimate for 2003 assumes the financing of these costs, regardless of whether contracts are concluded with the company for the performance of specific works or not ... ”.

It was planned to spend much more on transport - 1,744.6 thousand rubles a year. We quote the protocol of the commission: “The cost of one car is 3,318 thousand rubles (97.6 thousand US dollars), which corresponds to the cost of executive class cars, such as Megades Venz S-class and BMW 745, or 21 GAZ-3110 Volga cars. The cost of car insurance alone is 457.9 thousand rubles (about 13.5 thousand US dollars) per year, which corresponds to the cost of three GAZ-3110 Volga cars. At the same time, the cost of car rental includes the cost of drivers' wages in the amount of 813.6 thousand rubles (23.9 thousand US dollars) per year, or about 2 thousand dollars per month. The materials presented by OAO NK Rosneft do not allow us to assess the feasibility of such high costs for the operation of vehicles ... "

The remaining expenses could be written in the “Other” column: the acquisition and maintenance of seven information databases in the amount of 8,720 thousand rubles (256.5 thousand US dollars) per year, the cost of subscription and professional literature in 260 thousand rubles, and, most interestingly, expenses for advertising in the amount of 80 thousand rubles. As the author of the official document remarks with a considerable degree of irony on this occasion, "at the same time, no explanations are given of exactly what goods (works, services) the company intends to advertise in 2003."

Under calculation

The conclusion of the government commission is quite categorical: “Given the foregoing and due to the fact that about 60% of the work will be performed by third-party organizations, and the functions of authorized companies are defined as auxiliary in relation to the federal executive authorities, and also due to the significant costs for their implementation by insignificant forces of authorized organizations, the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia proposes to discuss the following options:

1. Assign part of the functions of control over the involvement of third-party organizations to the relevant structural divisions of the federal executive authorities (the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia, the Ministry of Finance of Russia).

<...> 3. Organize the formation of the structures of the PSA departments of authorized organizations in accordance with the generally recognized practice of managing complex projects. The essence of this approach is to hire on a permanent basis a small group of project managers (3-8 people) ... ".

Whether employees of the PSA department of Rosneft will now have a chance to ride on a Mercedes paid for by the state budget and receive a package with reference literature issued from overseas is unknown. Apparently, the funding of production sharing specialists will be cut regardless of the fate of the scandalous law. This is not the first time that the state has ruled over obviously inflated estimates of its own enterprises. One can only be happy for the Russian taxpayers, whose money was saved by a strict commission. True, Rosneft's financing of control over agreements is a relatively inexpensive issue. Especially in comparison with the possible losses of the state budget from the widespread introduction of the PSAs themselves.