OREANDA-NEWS. October 3, 2011. At the recent international conference “Oil and gas of Sakhalin 2011” Grigory Vygon, Director of SKOLKOVO Energy Centre, stated that the competitive performance of the Russian continental shelf is still rather low despite its high resource potential.

According to Vygon, there are several obstacles for active mining of the Russian continental shelf. Among them are the following ones: lack of advantageous investment conditions, suboptimal tax system and obsolete principles of resources usage entitlement.  "All this makes conduction of geological-exploratory works at the shelf unprofitable", - pointed out Vygon in his report “Deployment of the Russian continental shelf: stimulation problems and directions”. Having abandoned export customs, share of current taxes should be reduced, - said Vygon at the conference.

Vygon also thinks that one more necessary step for the shelf mining stimulation is creating conditions for conduction of speculative seismic works by independent private companies. “The price of an exploration cased hole in Arctic may reach USD 200 million. It’s comparable with year volume financing from federal budget of geological-exploratory works on hydrocarbon”, - explained Vygon. “In some cases companies are ready to hold independently not only exploration, but also regional works, as it, for instance, was in the Caspian when LUKOIL accomplished the whole complex of geological-exploratory works and discovered large accumulations”, - announced Grigory Vygon. And the role of state in geological-exploratory works should be reduced.

Vygon described the ratification of the contract between Rosneft, JSC and Exxon Mobil that took place at the conference as a landmark. He understands it can help to activate works at the shelf. “For expansion of such experience and the previous experience of LUKOIL advantageous investment conditions should be created at the whole shelf. SKOLKOVO Energy Centre is working in this direction”, - said Grigory Vygon.