Russian Natural Resources Ministry instructs Rosneft to return unwanted shelf sections
MOSCOW. Jan 23 (Interfax) - Russia's Natural Resources and Environment Ministry, in draft license agreements for 12 shelf sections to be issued to Rosneft , obligated the state-owned oil company to return areas in whose further development it is not interested, Deputy Natural Resources and Environment Minister Denis Khramov told reporters.
"There are legal possibilities of such a procedure, but it needs to be realized in practice in the form of license obligations," he said.
"These obligations are already in the licenses that we just sent to the government," Khramov said.
Once 2D seismic is performed, Rosneft itself has to identify the sites in which it is no longer interested, as well as the areas that it considers to be most promising, where it will perform 3D seismic. In turn, the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry will monitor the return of the former areas.
"We will closely follow it so that the sections where geological exploration is complete and which the company considers to be unpromising are submitted to the unallocated fund," Khramov said.
After a meeting in Novy Urengoy, the government instructed the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry to improve the mechanisms for returning these territories.
"It's not that this mechanism needs to be recreated - it simply needs to be realized in practice. Everywhere, in every country, even in Russia, companies needlessly hold onto gigantic areas the size of an average European country so that nobody else can do anything with them," Khramov said.
Khramov did not say to whom these unwanted areas will be transferred. He said that Gazprom , for example, has suggested later returning these sites to it.
"At the meeting, Gazprom said that it will return [sections] to the unallocated fund. Naturally, it was against sections from the unallocated fund being provided to anybody else," he said.
