The court passed

Irkutsk Arbitration refused to consider the case of revocation of the license for Kovykta

TNK-BP, despite all the efforts of lawyers, is unable to stop the process of revoking the license for the giant Kovykta gas condensate field (gas reserves reach 1.9 trillion cubic meters). Yesterday, the Irkutsk Regional Arbitration Court stopped proceedings on the claim of TNK-BP's subsidiary, the company RUSIA-Petroleum, in which it challenged the decision of the Rosnedr commission to issue the company a notice of license revocation. At the same time, the court lifted its ban directly on the recall procedure, introduced a week earlier. The judge explained his decision very vaguely by saying that “both the act (of the Rosprirodnadzor inspection, on the basis of which the decision to revoke the license is made - Ed. ) and the notification do not entail adverse consequences for the applicant.” Now officials will be able to freely take Kovykta away from TNK-BP and transfer it to the unallocated Rosnedra fund . True, the company assures that it intends to continue the legal fight for this deposit.

TNK received a license to develop Kovykta more than ten years ago through a competition, one of the conditions of which was to provide the domestic market of the Irkutsk region with gas in the amount of 9 billion cubic meters per year since 2006. But, without agreeing with Gazprom on the export of Kovykta gas to China and the participation of the monopoly in the project and preparing the field for industrial production, it did not begin it.

In February of this year, the Rosnedra commission announced the start of the process of revoking the license. RUSIA-Petroleum was ordered to correct production violations within a three-month period, expiring on May 23 of this year. It is clear that this was impossible to do. Therefore, at the end of April, RUSIA-Petroleum filed a lawsuit in the Irkutsk court to invalidate Rosnedra’s notification to revoke the license. At that time, the court sided with the subsoil users and decided to suspend the document as an interim measure.

The court's decision, although it was unexpected for officials, nevertheless did not reduce their determination to revoke the license. The very next day, the head of the Ministry of Natural Resources, Yuri Trutnev, stated that “Irkutsk arbitration is not the highest authority,” and the interim measure concerns only the actions of Rosnedra, and not Rosprirodnadzor, and this means that the latter’s inspectors have every right to conduct inspections of this field . A little later, this was apparently explained to the court, which closed the case immediately after the first preliminary hearing.

Yesterday, the deputy head of Rosprirodnadzor, Oleg Mitvol, confirmed to Vremya Novostey that his agency has already conducted a repeat inspection confirming the violations, and its materials have been sent to Rosnedra. “Understand, these were technical actions. The entire check consisted of one question, whether there is gas (in the volume of 9 billion cubic meters per year - Ed. ) or not, and it took one day, Mr. Mitvol explained. - So now the decision is up to Rosnedra. According to a source in the Ministry of Natural Resources, the issue of revoking the license for Kovykta may be brought up at the next meeting of Rosnedra - June 1. The press service of Rosnedra has not yet confirmed this information.

TNK-BP now openly admits that the decision on Kovykta depends only on political will. “It is already clear - Yuri Trutnev has clearly stated this - that the license will be revoked, and since the Kovyktinskoye field is very large, this is a political issue,” Interfax quotes TNK-BP Management lawyer Gennady Ratnikov, who represented the company at court However, for now TNK-BP is determined to defend its license to the end. “Our lawyers are now considering possible options for filing an appeal, including to various authorities,” said the TNK-BP press service. One of them, the company clarifies, may be challenging the decision of Rosnedra itself in a Moscow court after the commission revokes the license for Kovykta.

Anna GORSHKOVA