The State Duma proposed transferring resources to Gazprom and Transneft without auctions

A draft law has been submitted to the State Duma, which assumes transfer of resources to natural monopolists in the field of oil transportation through pipelines (Gazprom and Transneft) without holding auctions. According to the document, companies will be given common mineral resources (MRI) for their extraction and exploration. In particular, OPI includes limestone, peat, chalk, gypsum, clay, bitumen and gravel. It is also proposed to give natural monopolies the right to use subsoil plots of local importance without holding auctions.

The authors of the document were United Russia deputies – head of the Duma Committee on Ecology, former head of the Ministry of Natural Resources Dmitry Kobylkin, head of the State Duma Committee on Energy Pavel Zavalny and deputy chairman of the Duma Committee on Budget and Taxes Olga Anufrieva.

The authors of the bill propose to amend the federal law “On Subsoil”. “The operational implementation of the set goals and objectives involves increasing the number and scale of physical construction of pipeline transport infrastructure projects, and without significantly minimizing the number and timing of administrative procedures, it seems objectively impossible,” says the explanatory note to the document.

As the authors of the initiative note, the provisions of the bill will not apply to all main pipelines, but only to those that will be determined by the government of the Russian Federation based on the priority of the implementation of infrastructure projects; in other cases, the current procedure for granting the right to use subsoil plots of local significance for exploration and extraction of common minerals.

Alexander Kislov