Customs Unions puts Karachaganak on list of deposits with preferential duties
MOSCOW. Nov 29 (Interfax) - The Customs Union Commission has decided to include the Karachaganak oil and gas condensate deposit on the list of deposits extended preferential oil export duties.
There are twenty-two Russian deposits on the list (twenty in Eastern Siberia and two in the Caspian Sea) and seventy-three in Belarus. Karachaganak was the first in Kazakhstan to be put on the list. These deposits are regulated by a separate customs code.
Russian and Belarusian duties on oil and oil products have been unified. So, the export duty on oil taken outside Russia and the other Customs Union countries will be $406.6 per tonne, and the preferential rate $200.9 per tonne.
Customs duty rates on oil have not been unified between Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. At the present time, the export duty on any oil exported from Kazakhstan is $40 per tonne. There are no preferential oil export duties in Kazakhstan.
The director of the Economic Development Ministry's department for the development and regulation of foreign economic activities, Vitaly Gudin, told Interfax the Commission's decision exclusively concerns Kazakhstan and singling out the Karachaganak deposit for a preferential rate. "There are analogous deposits in Russia and Belarus," he said.
The Karachaganak deposit is being developed under a production-sharing agreement. Project operator Karachaganak Petroleum Operating (KPO) did not pay an export duty until mid-2010. However, the Kazakh government decided to levy one, arguing that PSA did not stipulate the stability of export duties.
Also, the inclusion of deposits on the preferential-duty list confirmed by the Commission does not guarantee the provision of preferred, or on the contrary, increased duties. So, of the twenty-two Russian deposits regulated by the separate customs code, seven do not get breaks on the rate (the Talakanskoye, Dulisminskoye, Zapadno-Ayanskoye, Yaraktinskoye, Markovskoye, Alinskoye, and Danilovskoye deposits).
The international KPO consortium, in which BG Group has a 32.5% stake, Eni - 32.5%, Chevron - 20%, and Lukoil -15%, is working Karachaganak under a forty-year PSA signed in 1997. The deposit is one of the biggest in the world, with 1.2 billion tonnes of oil and 1.35 trillion cubic meters of gas.
