Branch for "Rospan"

The Prosecutor General's Office demands that the license of TNK-BP's subsidiary be revoked

The search for skeletons in the closet of TNK-BP, which clearly does not fit into the Kremlin’s new oil and gas policy, continues. Yesterday, the Prosecutor General's Office announced that it had submitted a proposal to revoke the license of TNK-BP's 100 percent subsidiary, Rospan International CJSC. The materials say that the company “systematically violated laws on subsoil, licensing, nature protection, and also carried out work without a license or a positive environmental impact assessment.” According to Vremya Novostei's source at Rosnedra, the relevant documents have already been received and the subsoil use commission may consider them as early as next Friday. TNK-BP claims that Rospan sent requests to all regulatory departments for the issuance of permits last year, but has not yet received a response from the departments.” And State Duma deputy from United Russia Anton Bakov just yesterday withdrew his request to the Prosecutor General, on the basis of which inspections of Rospan began and a proposal was made to withdraw the license.

It should also be noted that the head of TNK-BP, Robert Dudley, has been seeking an audience with the Minister of Natural Resources, Yuri Trutnev, for more than a month, according to whose profile most of the claims against the Anglo-Russian oil and gas joint venture are based. It is officially reported that the meeting is postponed due to difficulties in connecting the schedules of the top manager and the official. Previously, the Prosecutor General's Office had already carried out a demonstrative flogging of another company affiliated with TNK-BP - RUSIA Petroleum, which holds a license for the giant Kovyktinskoye field in the Irkutsk region. However, a formal reason for repression against this subsoil user, as is known, may appear only at the beginning of next year (when the company will not be able to supply 9.6 billion cubic meters of gas from Kovykta to consumers in the region in 2006, as stated in the license).

Rospan holds licenses to develop the Achimov deposits (depth about 3,500 m) of the Novo-Urengoy and East Urengoy oil and gas fields. Their gas reserves are estimated at 1 trillion cubic meters, and their projected production is 15 billion cubic meters per year.

This story began on September 16, when Mr. Bakov, with reference to information received from the observer of the online publication Obshchaya Gazeta.ru (publishes a digest of Russian print media) A. Golovichev, sent a request to the Prosecutor General’s Office “about violations of the law during the mining of Rospan CJSC International".

Two weeks later, on October 2, the “potential violator” was informed about the start of the inspection and requested documents. However, yesterday Mr. Bakov withdrew his request. “As far as I know, Rospan submitted all the necessary documents to the state licensing authorities, and in connection with this, Anton Alekseevich (Bakov - Ed. ) withdrew his request,” assistant deputy Elena Lysenko explained to Interfax. “At the time of writing the appeal, the situation was different.” She also confirmed that Rospan had approached Mr. Bakov with a request to withdraw the request.

Nevertheless, the Prosecutor General's Office announced the violations discovered and sent a demand to Rosnedra to withdraw the license. “During the inspection, the facts stated in the appeal were confirmed,” Yuri Chaika’s department emphasized. -- It was found that the joint-stock company, as a subsoil user, did not comply with all the terms of the license agreements during the validity period of the licenses, and systematically did not comply with the requirements of legislation on environmental protection and industrial safety. Many orders issued by regulatory authorities were not followed by Rospan International CJSC.”

In addition, as the inspectors found out, the project did not receive a positive conclusion from the state environmental assessment. “In a number of cases, the extraction of groundwater for production purposes was carried out without projects, as well as without a license obtained in the prescribed manner, which contradicts the Water Code. Construction work at three facilities of the East Urengoy field was carried out without appropriate approvals and allotments, contrary to the Land Code,” the statement says. As noted in the Prosecutor General's Office, “the requirements stipulated by law to provide an economic entity with a subsoil plot for exploration and production of mineral raw materials in the form of a mining allotment are not observed.” The mining allotment act dated April 15, 2004 (Novo-Urengoy oil and gas condensate field) expired on January 1, 2006, and the mining allotment act dated April 14, 2004 (East Urengoy oil and gas condensate field) expired on May 1, 2006. “However, work on their development continues. Over the nine months of 2006, the first of them produced 1,154 million cubic meters of gas and 223 thousand tons of condensate, and the second, for the period from 01.05.2006 to 01.10.2006 - 546 million cubic meters of gas and 153 thousand tons of condensate,” -- reports the prosecutor's office.

However, the license revocation is still very far away. If the Rosnedra commission recognizes violations, Rospan will receive an order to eliminate them within six months. And only then are real repressions possible.

Alexey GRIVACHS, Anna GORSHKOVA