RusEnergy

25.10.2005 11:07 MSK MosNews - On Monday, Oct. 24, Russia's Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev named the five major natural resources whose access will be restricted for foreign companies. Trutnev was meeting with the president of the Confederation of British Industry John Sunderland and represenatives of major British companies. The Russian minister said that the "strategic" label won't be applied to those deposits that have already been tendered for development. In practice only five deposits fall under this category: the Titov and Trebs oil fields in the Yamalo-Nenets autonomous district in West Siberia, the Chayandinskoye oil and natural gas field in Yakutia, the Sukhoi Log gold deposit in the Irkutsk region and the Udokan copper deposits in the Chita region, in East Siberia. Yuri Trutnev also told the British businessmen that the new draft law on subsoil could be adopted in late 2005 or early 2006 and could come into force in the second half of 2006. He also informed them of amendments to the Tax Code which are being developed jointly with the Economy and Finance Ministries. The amendments concern the differentiation of severance tax. "The amendments presupposes a lowering of severance tax for deposits which are depleted by more than 85%, for hard-to-recover reserves of oil and gas, and for the development of new deposits in poorly explored territories, for example in East Siberia and on the continental shelf," a Natural Resources Ministry press statement, which was released after the meeting, said. Following the meeting, the head of the British delegation John Sunderland noted that the planned changes in Russian legislation "have a high potential for attracting foreign investments".