Russian companies must face the consequences of their industrial activities, Minister of Natural Resources Sergey Donskoy highlights in an article published in the Rossiiskaya Gazeta. The Ministry is now elaborating a new law, which will commit industrial companies to clean up the production site after a project’s end.
“After having exploited to the maximum the mineral resources of a field, the company leaves it all to the state”, Donskoy writes in the article. “With it follow ponds of oil, which can spill into the rivers, hydrogen sulphide and emissions of methane from coal mines”, he adds.
The new legislation will help protect the interests of the state, Minister Donskoy argues. He maintains that Russian authorities over the last years have spent a great number of billion rubles on environmental clean-up after industrial activities.
The draft law includes the establishment of special funds for the companies engaging in mineral extraction. The funds will have to be applied by the extracting companies in the active phase of the industrial projects and quarterly sums will amount to between 0,8 to 6 percent of project development costs.
According to Minister Donskoy, the funds will “without doubt affect the economy of the projects”. However, this approach helps us minimize the negative effects, he underlines.
The new law from the Ministry of Natural Resources will help Russian authorities handle abandoned mineral projects. However, as admitted by Donskoy himself, there will be ways to circumvent the legislation. Companies with “a great number of projects”, as well as the companies which invests in geological exploration will get exemptions, he writes.
