Deputies of the State Duma Committee on Ecology, Natural Resources and Environmental Protection approved for the first reading the amendments to the Law “On Subsoil” developed by the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia. The amendments provide for the possibility of selling licenses for mineral exploration, as well as allowing private investment in the regional, that is, the earliest stage of geological exploration.
The first initiative – after the adoption of the bill, geological exploration licenses can be sold without confirmation of property or corporate ties between the investor and the subsoil user.
“Today, a license can only be sold by selling the company that owns it. Because of this, large holdings acquire hundreds of legal entities, small ones, in whose name the licenses are issued. At the same time, to exclude speculation, the document provides for restrictions: this is the absence of violations under the license for two years preceding the sale of the license, and the simultaneous transfer to the investor of approved documentation for geological exploration and available geological information on the subsoil site,” said Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology of Russia Dmitry Tetenkin.
The second innovation is the admission of private investment in the regional stage of geological exploration, which is traditionally carried out and financed by the state. At the moment, this is done by the subordinate institutes of Rosnedra: the All-Russian Scientific Research Geological Oil Institute (VNIGNI) and the All-Russian Scientific Research Geological Institute named after A.P. Karpinsky (VSEGEI).
“The regional stage of geological exploration is the basis of all work, the successful development of the field, extraction, and then processing of minerals directly depend on it. Therefore, only Russian companies with at least five years of geological exploration experience, which have not had any violations over the past two years, will be admitted to it. We expect that with the arrival of private investors in the early stages of geological exploration, the number of discovered fields will increase many times over. If today we receive about 40 objects per year, then in the future there will be about a hundred,” commented the head of the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia Alexander Kozlov.
The state will continue to control regional work: for this purpose, a Procedure will be adopted regulating the implementation of this stage of geological exploration.