Translated material
Subsoil on lock
The Ministry of Natural Resources accused Gazprom of the lack of oil reserves in Eastern Siberia
The Ministry of Natural Resources decided to seriously look into why oil companies do not want to invest money in the development of Eastern Siberia and prepare the raw material base for filling the second stage of the Eastern Siberia - Pacific Ocean oil pipeline. Yesterday, this issue was actively discussed at the board of the ministry with the participation of its head Yuri Trutnev, representatives of Rosnedra, Rosprirodnadzor and the Ministry of Industry and Energy. The meeting participants had to admit that, in addition to the traditional reasons - short validity periods of licenses, large areas for geological exploration in this region, a high degree of geological risks and underdeveloped infrastructure - the development of Eastern Siberia is hampered by the lack of an appropriate program being prepared by Gazprom. According to Deputy Minister of Natural Resources Alexei Varlamov, because of this, Rosnedra cannot issue licenses for the development of oil rims in large gas and oil fields in Eastern Siberia, primarily in the Chayandinskoye field in Yakutia.Over the past few years, the government has been actively promoting the idea of diversifying oil supplies by building a pipeline to the Asia-Pacific market. In 2005, a two-stage construction project for an oil pipeline was developed. As part of the first stage, it was planned to build in 2006-2008 one line with a capacity of 30 million tons of oil per year from Taishet to Skovorodino for oil supplies to China. The oil pipeline was supposed to be filled with West Siberian oil. At the second stage, it was planned to build a second line from Skovorodino to Kozmino Bay and increase the capacity of the oil pipeline to 80 million tons per year, while an additional 50 million tons of oil were supposed to be provided by commissioning fields in Eastern Siberia. However, when the government drew up plans for the construction of the oil pipeline, it did not take into account the fact that YUKOS, as the owner of the license for the Yurubcheno-Takhomskaya and Tersko-Kamovskaya areas, did not develop these areas. Because of this, the growth of oil reserves in the C1 category in Eastern Siberia decreased as of January 1, 2007 compared to the forecast by 146.9 million, to 556.8 million tons.
Yuri Trutnev promised the future buyer of Yukos's East Siberian assets to retain the licenses. “I don’t think that a new subsoil user will face revocation of its license. In the case when it is already put up for auction, we must provide the bona fide purchaser with a guarantee that he will be able to work in the fields,” he assured. “We will simply provide an additional period (to eliminate violations. - Ed. ).” According to the minister, a similar approach should be applied at all fields where there is a change of ownership. True, whether this will affect, for example, the Kovyktinskoye gas field in the Irkutsk region, the owner of which, TNK-BP, is facing the threat of revocation in favor of Gazprom, Mr. Trutnev refused to say.
Meanwhile, he said that he intends to meet in May with representatives of oil companies operating in Eastern Siberia and discuss with them plans to prepare for filling the oil pipeline under construction. According to the Ministry of Natural Resources, subsoil users annually underfund the development of Eastern Siberia by approximately 13-14 billion rubles. In 2006, out of the planned 20 billion rubles. Only 6.5 billion rubles were invested in geological exploration of this region. “We need to listen to them, why they don’t want to invest in the development of Eastern Siberia. If these are fears due to mistrust in the construction of the ESPO, then they can be understood and reassured, if there may be other reasons, then we need to understand what they are,” said Mr. Trutnev.
However, according to Mr. Varlamov, the problem of replenishing reserves in Eastern Siberia could be solved through the Chayandinskoye field. As is known, it is included in the list of strategic fields with gas reserves of 1.2 trillion cubic meters and oil reserves of 100 million tons. However, its oil rims cannot be divided into separate sections and provided for development by oil companies due to Gazprom’s desire to comprehensively develop the Chayandinskoye field as part of the program for the development and gasification of Eastern Siberia. The deputy minister noted that the Ministry of Natural Resources, at the request of Gazprom, carried out an inspection, as a result of which “the conclusions of the monopoly (about the need for comprehensive development of the field - Ed .) were not confirmed.” According to him, due to disagreements on this issue, Gazprom has already asked the ministry to postpone the licensing of the Chayanda rims.
A little later, Mr. Trutnev tried to smooth over the statement of his subordinate, noting that the Chayandinskoye field is in the unallocated subsoil fund, which means that Gazprom nominally has nothing to do with this field. But he also could not resist criticizing the monopoly. According to Mr. Trutnev, his ministry has many “serious complaints” against Gazprom regarding the pace of development of promising fields, primarily in Yamal. “We will talk with the management of Gazprom. The deposits need to be developed quickly,” he said. Gazprom assures that all work is being carried out on time and that they are ready for the meeting with Mr. Trutnev.
But even all these measures will not allow us to fully provide the material and raw material base for filling the ESPO. As Sergei Fedorov, head of the department of state policy in the field of geology and subsoil use of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, noted yesterday, “the expansion of ESPO to 80 million tons per year may be delayed for three to four years.” True, Transneft responded to this by saying that there was never a specific time frame for the construction of the second stage of the oil pipeline.
The Federal Service for Environmental, Technological and Nuclear Supervision (Rostechnadzor) instructed the management of the Druzhba main oil pipeline, owned by Transneft, to eliminate dangerous defects and non-compliance with industrial safety requirements on the Unecha-Polotsk-1 main oil pipelines within two weeks, - 2. Rostekhnadzor requires the owners of the Druzhba oil pipeline to take measures to improve the safety of oil pipelines during the period of a complex of restoration work, as well as to determine the deadline for completing a complex of studies and completing restoration work. In connection with the accident at the Druzhba oil pipeline on July 29, 2006, a decision was made to limit the operating pressure in the Unecha-Polotsk section. INTERFAX-ANI