Protocol is more valuable than words

The government is not considering the issue of transferring the Chayandinskoye field and Sakhalin-3 to Gazprom

Gazprom's scandalously approved request by Mikhail Fradkov and the Ministry of Industry and Energy to transfer the licenses for the Chayandinskoye oil and gas field in Yakutia and the offshore areas of the Sakhalin-3 project to the concern has not yet received any follow-up. The text of the official minutes of the meeting of the government commission on the fuel and energy complex of June 15, which Vremya Novostey has at its disposal, does not contain instructions to study this issue. In addition, the Ministry of Industry and Energy was instructed to “clarify” the program for creating a unified gas supply system in eastern Russia, taking into account the discussion that took place, and then approve it in the prescribed manner. In other words, submit it for consideration by the government, which is authorized to accept such documents.

The Chayandinskoye field (with gas reserves of 1.2 trillion cubic meters) and Sakhalin-3 (600 million tons of oil and 700 billion cubic meters of gas) are in the unallocated subsoil fund. The Ministry of Natural Resources has been promising to put them up for auction for many years now. But each time these intentions are abandoned, since a comprehensive program for the development of gas resources in Eastern Siberia and the Far East (with which, undoubtedly, licensing obligations need to be synchronized) has not yet been adopted. During a discussion of the latest version of the program at the government commission on the fuel and energy complex, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Gazprom Alexander Ananenkov, who oversaw the preparation of the document, asked the Cabinet of Ministers to transfer these licenses to the monopolist. “We have no other resource base to supply gas in pursuance of intergovernmental agreements,” he explained. And I found understanding from Mr. Fradkov: “And now we are giving the role of the operator into the hands of Gazprom. It’s better to do it openly than to push around behind the deposits.” The objections of the Minister of Natural Resources Yuri Trutnev, who diplomatically called this step extra-systemic (although in fact it contradicts the country's legislation), were ignored.

However, in the text of the minutes of the meeting there is not a word about this story. The Ministry of Natural Resources was instructed only to prepare “together with the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Finance and other federal executive bodies and submit before August 1, 2007 for consideration at the next meeting of the commission proposals for improving the organization and implementation of geological exploration work in the Russian Federation, including the departmental affiliation of geological enterprises "

It is possible that the gas concern will make a new attempt to gain advantages in the pursuit of the Chayandinskoye field and Sakhalin-3 after the approval of the program itself, which is scheduled for the fall of this year.

It should also be noted that the protocol included an instruction to the head of Gazprom, Alexey Miller (who was not present at the meeting), to prepare and submit to the government in September a gas balance until 2020. The head of RAO UES of Russia, Anatoly Chubais, insisted on the inclusion of this clause. He, however, had in mind shorter deadlines for submitting data, without which it would be impossible to finalize the general layout of electric power facilities. As you know, the government reviewed it in the spring and ordered it to be finalized by September, since no one gave guarantees of fuel supplies to new facilities.

Alexey GRIVACHS