Translated material
Stone flower
The development of a new law “On subsoil” turned out to be too tough for the government
The Ministry of Natural Resources was never able to develop a new law “On subsoil” . “The attempt to create a new law did not work, it did not pass, now the Ministry of Natural Resources is preparing changes to the current law,” said Anatoly Ledovskikh, head of the Federal Agency for Subsoil Use (Rosnedra), at a press conference yesterday. As a source in Vremya Novostei clarified Ministry, in January of this year, a meeting was held at the Ministry of Natural Resources, at which it was decided to abandon attempts to develop a new law “On subsoil” and focus on adopting amendments to the existing legislation. “The new draft law “On subsoil” is going very hard and for a long time, therefore. it was decided to approve a certain list of amendments, which will be divided into thematic blocks , and to introduce them in blocks to the State Duma,” he said. According to the ministry’s plans, the amendments should be adopted during the current year.The current law “On Subsoil” was adopted back in 1992. However, it is of a general declarative nature and does not contain specific rules for the development of subsoil. Therefore, more than one generation of ministers of natural resources has proposed replacing it with a new, more detailed and legally developed law. The current head of the Ministry of Natural Resources, Yuri Trutnev, who took this post in 2004 , announced the development of a new law “On subsoil” as the main task of his department. However, apparently, there was no clear vision of the concept of the new bill in the ministry. He only promised to write a law “from scratch” that would clearly define the rights of subsoil users. Thus, during the first year of his work in the ministry, Mr. Trutnev proposed only to edit the existing law; later he spoke in favor of a transition to civil law relations and the abolition of the licensing system. At the beginning of 2005, the minister unexpectedly announced that the new bill would provide for restricting access of foreign subsoil users to strategic deposits. At the same time, the ministry began to talk about the need to abandon the system of issuing licenses on a competitive basis and introduce a system of auctions, including on the shelf. A little later, officials started talking about the fact that shelf development should have been regulated by a separate law. In the middle of last year, the Ministry of Natural Resources decided to abandon this idea and proposed to distribute shelf deposits on a competitive basis. And this year, all offshore fields were generally recognized as strategic.
In November 2005, the bill was submitted to the State Duma for consideration in the first reading. However, a few hours before the start of the meeting, the Ministry of Natural Resources withdrew the law, arguing that it needed improvement. Since then, no one has seen the new edition. Several times at the end of 2005 and at the beginning of last year, the Ministry of Natural Resources promised to bring the law to the State Duma , but no concrete steps were taken in this direction. As a result, the ministry was forced to admit that the adoption of the law “On Subsoil” was being slowed down, and they started talking about the need to adopt amendments.
Yesterday at a press conference, Anatoly Ledovskikh said that the existing law “works normally,” although with a number of shortcomings. For example, according to him, the law does not clearly define the conditions, if not met, the license can be revoked. To eliminate such shortcomings, the Ministry of Natural Resources plans to introduce more than 60 amendments.
The desire of the ministry to modernize the current legislation was confirmed to Vremya Novostei by the director of the department of state policy and regulation in the field of environmental management of the Ministry of Natural Resources, Sergei Fedorov. “Nobody canceled the bill “On Subsoil” and there were no decisions, including from the government, in this regard. Now this document is in the government,” he said. - But at the same time we are working on amendments to the current law. This year, a whole annual plan was developed according to which they will be accepted.” It is expected that changes relating to geological exploration, issuance of licenses, amendments to licenses, control over the implementation of licenses, and so on will be identified in separate blocks. In addition, Mr. Fedorov notes, it is necessary to work out the issue of the procedure for developing the sea shelf, including such an issue as the issuance of end-to-end licenses.
Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Natural Resources and Environmental Management Natalya Komarova, in turn, told Vremya Novostei that today the State Duma will host a working meeting of the committee with the participation of representatives of the Ministry of Natural Resources, at which plans for joint work of the ministry and the legislative body will be discussed. “In principle, we are ready to work in the mode of amendments to the current legislation, since rewriting the law again is very difficult,” she said. - We had experience in adopting a law that was written anew, in particular the Water or Forestry Code. But this is a very difficult process. So now we are ready to try to work in a new form.” According to her, first of all, it is necessary to develop amendments that stimulate the development of the material and raw material base and the conduct of geological exploration, as well as rules for subsoil development.
Nevertheless, the Ministry of Natural Resources is not giving up and is trying to implement the main points of the new bill written in the form of amendments to the current legislation. In particular, a month ago it tried to introduce a rule limiting the access of foreign companies to Russian fields, together with amendments to the Ministry of Industry and Energy on the admission of foreign companies to strategic industries. Mr. Trutnev then stated that the amendments were already ready and would be considered by the government and adopted within a month. However, they have not yet gone beyond the Ministry of Natural Resources. According to Mr. Fedorov, the process of agreeing with the FSB on the criteria for strategic deposits is now underway, after which these proposals should be submitted for consideration by the government. According to some information, security officers are not satisfied that the Ministry of Natural Resources has only 38 strategic deposits; they insist that other subsoil areas should have the same status.
So it turns out that Yuri Trutnev did not become a minister who would have been able to bring the new law “On Subsoil” into force. Apparently, this will be the case as long as in Russia the raw materials industries are the main source of income for the federal budget.