A subsidiary of British-Russian oil firm TNK-BP remains likely to lose its licence to operate the huge Kovykta gas field despite winning the right to a court hearing, Russian Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev said on Tuesday.
The firm gained a reprieve against the threatened withdrawal of its licence for the East Siberian field by persuading a court in the Irkutsk region to clarify its licence obligations at a hearing set for May 23.
Asked whether he still expected the licence to be withdrawn, Trutnev said "I think so, yes. They are not fulfilling their licence agreement. Irkutsk arbitration court is not the highest court.
"The final decision will be taken by (Russian environmental agency) RosPrirodNadzor," Trutnev told reporters at a conference in Moscow. "I am sure the final decision will be fair."
RosPrirodNadzor (RPN) is a body within Trutnev's ministry and has been at the forefront of campaigns against several foreign companies. Its activities have often been interpreted as an attempt to put pressure on firms to sell up to Russian state-controlled enterprises.
Last year Royal Dutch Shell and its Japanese partners sold half of their $20 billion Sakhalin-2 project to Russian gas export monopoly Gazprom after lengthy negotiations, during which RPN repeatedly threatened the venture with administrative sanctions and licence revocations.
The Kovykta licence is held by Rusia Petroleum, 62.9 percent-owned by TNK-BP, which itself is half-owned by Britain's BP Plc.
Trutnev wants to strip the licence because production at the field is far below the amount stipulated in its licence terms. But the firm says Gazprom has refused to let it export the field's gas to China, forcing it to supply the far smaller local market instead.
State officials have said the company is making poor excuses for failing to meet licensing terms. But their criticism of the company has widely been seen as the stirrings of a Kremlin attempt to take over the project.
(Reuters, 15/05/2007)