Duma News

On January 19-20, 2017 Novorossiysk Shipping Company (Novoship), a subsidiary of SCF Group, hosted special events dedicated to the company’s 50th anniversary. The anniversary ceremony was attended by Victor Olersky, Deputy Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation, Head of the Federal Marine and River Transport Agency (Rosmorrechflot); Alexey Kondratenko, Member of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation; Evgeniy Moskvichev, Chairman of the State Duma Transport Committee; Alexey Klyavin, President of the Russian Chamber of Shipping; Yury Sukhorukov, President of the Seafarers’ Union of Russia, and Sergey Frank, President & CEO of PAO Sovcomflot. Novorossiysk Shipping Company was officially established on January 20, 1967.

Stavropol hosted today a groundbreaking ceremony of a versatile sports & recreation complex of Gazprom. The sports & recreation complex will include a 50 meter Olympic swimming pool, a versatile gym, a hall of martial arts as well as training grounds. Both amateur and professional athletes, children and adults will be able to comfortably train in the complex. In addition, the implementation of the Gazprom for Children program will go on in the region. “Sixty sports facilities, including ten versatile children’s sports grounds opened in 2014, already function in the Territory within this social project,” said Alexey Zavgorodnev. Taking part in the ceremony were Valery Golubev…

The European Parliament today passed a resolution calling for a protected area around the North Pole which could ban oil companies and industrial fishing fleets from the region. The text echoes the demands of an international campaign which has attracted the support of over five million people including Sir Paul McCartney and U.S. oceanographer, Sylvia Earle. The move represents a clear break from the current positions of ‘Arctic Council’ members such as Norway, Denmark, Canada and Russia who have resisted calls for permanent protection of the Arctic region.

The Greenpeace activists who spent two months in jail after their protest in the Arctic have expressed relief after the Russian parliament voted to grant them amnesty. The Russian parliament, the Duma, has voted for an amendment that extends an amnesty decree to defendants who have been charged with hooliganism. It therefore includes the Arctic 30 - the 28 activists and two freelance journalists who were arrested following a protest at a Gazprom-operated Arctic oil platform three month ago.

Lawyers for Greenpeace International believe the draft text of a Russian amnesty to be voted on by the Duma (the Russian parliament) would be unlikely to benefit the Arctic 30 protesters. Thus they still face the possibility of trial and conviction for their protest. In its present form, the proposal would apply only to people who have either been convicted of hooliganism, or people who are on trial and will be convicted within the six month period after the amnesty decree is adopted.

US's Duma Energy Corp. says it has received new 3D seismic data in its search for deeper oil reserves in its Galveston Bay producing fields. This new data, which covers three of Duma's fields in Galveston Bay, is part of a broader effort by several other large independent oil companies to identify and exploit the deeper potential believed to exist under the bay and surrounding areas. Duma is looking to exploit these deeper zones on its more than 18,000 acres in the bay. This new 3D seismic data will be an integral part of this effort and the Company is already working to have the newly received data analyzed and interpreted by its team.

OAO Sovcomflot opens its Saint-Petersburg captain & senior officer training & engineering centre (TEC) for Arctic offshore operations. The opening of the modern training centre in Russia’s maritime capital marks an important milestone in the implementation of the SCF development strategy which provides for an expansion of company participation in oil & gas projects in the Arctic and sub-Arctic. Sovcomflot vessels provide year-round support for large offshore energy projects, such as: Sakhalin-I, Sakhalin-II, Varandey, Tangguh, Escobar, and Peregrino.

President Vladimir Putin ordered the government and the Industry and Energy Ministry to prepare a draft decree on setting up a state-controlled shipbuilding compan, Moscow Times reported. Shipbuilding is one of the three industries that the government wants to develop as part of its drive to diversify the economy away from oil and gas exports -- a bid spearheaded by First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov. The other two sectors are the aircraft-building and space industries. The decree should be completed within the week, Putin said at Monday's Cabinet meeting. Putin added that Ivanov would supervise the creation of the company. An Industry and Energy Ministry spokeswoman said Monday that she was unaware of any prospective candidates to head the company.

Russian Minister of Industry and Energy Viktor Khristenko intends to support the Russian shipbuilding industry through new legislation to prevent it from falling behind Western competitors. His ministry estimates that up to 40 platforms will be needed for oil and gas production on then continental shelf by 2030, along with 85 specialized ships and more than 140 support ships. Among the proposed measures Khristenko told the State Duma about yesterday were the elimination of VAT on imported equipment that has no Russian-made analogs, interest-free credits for building ships, financing for modernization of production capacity. There would also be special measures “to reinforce the priority right of Russian industry to create means to develop the sea shelf…

The Government of Dubai and Dubai Petroleum Company (DPC) announced a joint agreement that will change the operating arrangements for Dubai offshore oilfields. Effective April 2007, DPC will end its role as operator, marking the end of Dubai's first offshore oil concession and the beginning of a new phase in which the Emirate of Dubai will directly control its offshore oil resources. DPC is wholly owned by ConocoPhillips and part of the DPC/Dubai Marine Areas Limited (DUMA) consortium involving interests from Total (France), Repsol YPF (Spain), RWE Dea AG, a subsidiary of RWE AG (Germany) and Wintershall AG, a subsidiary of BASF (Germany).

Sakhalin Island currently is the oil and gas growth engine for Russia, which will rely on offshore regions for new production after 2010, the Oil & Gas Journal reported. By 2020, offshore fields could account for 20% of Russia's total oil and gas output. However, Russia must implement regulations and taxes before its offshore oil and gas assets can be developed since offshore royalty issues remain largely unaddressed. The Russian Duma is working on the Mineral Extraction Law and on a new subsoil law. The Russian government's anticipated shift to holding auctions for oil and gas blocks instead of tenders now appears unlikely. International oil and gas companies operating in Russia probably will be prevented from taking more than 49% interest in offshore fields.