Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia to impose penalties for violation of terms of geological prospecting works
The Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology of the Russian Federation will impose penalties for violation of the terms of geological exploration, the press service of the ministry reports. The corresponding draft law – amendments to Article 43 of the Russian Federation “On Subsoil” – has been submitted to the Russian Government. The Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia expects that the law will enter into force on January 1, 2018.
Terms of geological study of subsurface are fixed in the Law “On Subsoil” and constitute, as a general rule, 5 years, and for individual regions of the country and the continental shelf – 7 and 10 years respectively. At the same time, subsoil users have the right to extend these deadlines to complete the work.
Today, in the global practice of regulating geological exploration of subsurface resources, a multiple increase in the amount of payments is made in the event of delay in geological exploration. The current version of the Law “On Subsoil” sets for the use of subsoil minor payments, which do not increase when working outside the regulatory deadline. So, when carrying out works on a subsoil plot with an area of 100 km2 for gold prospecting, the total maximum annual regular payment at the geological exploration stage is only 40,500 RUR.
According to S.Donskoy, the insignificant amount of regular payments allows unscrupulous subsurface users to “keep” subsoil areas for resale for a long time without the purpose of independently conducting geological exploration work on them. Today, the only way to encourage subsoil users to activate geological study is the mechanism of early termination of the licence to use subsoil for violation of the license obligations.
The law introduces an alternative mechanism through increasing payments. In particular, it is proposed to set raising coefficients to the maximum rate of regular payment for the use of subsoil in excess of the established period of geological study. For the first year after exceeding the deadline for geological exploration of subsurface resources, the maximum regular payment rate will be increased twice. For the second year after exceeding the deadline, the maximum regular payment rate will be increased 10-fold. For the third and subsequent years, the maximum regular payment rate will be increased 100-fold.
The introduced norms do not apply to the rates of regular payments for the use of subsoil in order to search for and assess hydrocarbon deposits on the continental shelf of Russia and in the exclusive economic zone of the Russian Federation, as well as outside Russia in the territories under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation.
The current legislation allows subsoil users, who drag the search activities, at any time to cancel the licence to use the subsoil and avoid paying increased regular payments. However, the introduced multiple increase of such payments is not an unreasonable burden on the entrepreneurs.
Press Service of MENR RT