| The Ministry of Natural Resources began to revoke licenses from oil workers The Ministry of Natural Resources revoked the first license from YUKOS. The right to use the subsoil of the Ust-Silginsk group of fields, the recoverable gas and condensate reserves of which amount to about 9 billion cubic meters, was lost by the subsidiary of the disgraced company, Tomskneftegazgeologiya-VNK. Two other oil companies - Rosneft and Russneft - have so far gotten away with only a warning.
The decision to deprive YUKOS of the opportunity to work at the gas condensate field was made yesterday by the Ministry of Natural Resources commission on issues of compliance with the terms of licenses for the right to use subsoil. Tomskneftegazgeologiya-VNK held a license for geological exploration and extraction of raw materials. However, officials from the Ministry of Natural Resources found that the company did not carry out a range of work to further explore the deposits, and the production level deviates significantly from the established level. Since 1993, the company was supposed to receive 3 billion cubic meters of gas from this subsoil site. The Ministry of Natural Resources could not clarify what the actual volume of extracted raw materials was, noting only that it was significantly less than planned. Moreover, the ministry noted, project documentation for the field has not been drawn up and approved.
Following YUKOS, Rosneft may also lose its two licenses in three months. Now the company owns the right to explore the Dimitrovsky and Derbentsky areas in Dagestan. However, as noted in the Ministry of Natural Resources, geological exploration work is still not being carried out on them, and seismic exploration is in smaller volumes than established. For the Derbent site, the company must submit project documentation for state environmental assessment. Rosneft refused to comment on the MPR's claims and did not say whether oil companies were at all interested in preserving these fields.
Once again, problems arose with the Ministry of Natural Resources and the owner of Russneft, Mikhail Gutseriev. His company strives to become a fairly large player in the market and is actively buying up deposits, including quite problematic ones. In the summer, Russneft acquired the Aki-Otyr company, whose reserves amount to about 90 million tons of oil. However, practically no work was carried out on it, and back in March the Ministry of Natural Resources issued an order to the enterprise regarding the possible revocation of its license. But Mr. Gutseriev managed to prove to officials that he intended to develop this site. And recently the Russneft collection has been replenished with new acquisitions. The company bought six enterprises (by the way, two years ago they were all part of Tomskneftegazgeologiya-VNK, but were then transferred by management outside the company), the total volume of proven reserves is approximately 30 million tons of oil. The Ministry of Natural Resources has no complaints about only one of them - Soboliny. For the Fedyushkinskoye and Grushevoe fields, the Ministry of Natural Resources ordered the preparation of draft amendments to the license agreements within a month, and the licenses for the Duklinskoye, Poselkovoe and Stolbovoye fields could be revoked within six months if the project documentation is not approved. RussNeft promises to fulfill all MPR requirements on time. Denis REBROV |
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