::: RUSENERGYLAW Journal ::: #4'2005

RusEnergyLaw JOURNAL • Archive/4'2005

Doran Doeh
Oil, Law and Politics in Russia

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Robert McGee
Prospects for Russia’s Oil Industry

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Svetlana Sineva and Shane DeBeer
Russia’s Subsoil Licensing Regime: New and Improved?

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Irina Paliashvili and Dmytro Syrota
New Government Initiatives for the Attraction of Investments in the Oil-and-Gas Sector in Ukraine

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Gawdat Bahgat
Energy Security: The European Union

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Thomas Wälde
Pro-Active Mediation of International Business & Investment Disputes Involving Long-Term Contracts: From Zero-Sum Litigation to Efficient Dispute Management

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Russia

Russian Government Increases Export Duties on Crude Oil by 30% as from June 1, 2005.

Government Adopts New Rules on the Subsoil and Exploration.

New Russian Law on Concessions.

Recent Developments in the Reform of the Russian Federation Anti-monopoly Legislation.

Special Economic Zones.

New Legislation on Registration of Legal Entities: Failure to Report Could Result in Exclusion from State Register.

Period of Limitations for Void Transactions Reduced to Three Years.

Mortgage over Immovable Property in the Russian Federation: Recent Developments.

Securities.

Amendments to the Tax Code.

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Kazakhstan

Laws of the Republic of Kazakhstan
Decrees of the Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan

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Baku-Tbilissi-Ceyhan Pipeline is a Milestone Project
for Security of Supply.

EU-OPEC Energy Dialogue.

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Oil-Gas-Energy Law Intelligence service
Table of Contents (Volume 3, issue #02, published June 2005)

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Attention! We consider a bullet symbol "!" an integral part of the original design of RusEnergyLaw Journal. This symbol is essential to our journal design because it makes the reader pay special attention to the paragraphs that are pointed out with our "!" symbol.

GOTO CURRENT YEAR ISSUES

Professor Thomas W. Wälde
Jean-Monnet Chair, Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy University of Dundee

EDITORIAL

Dear Colleagues,

This issue raises very interesting questions – not only for or in Russia.

First, the question of how to manage the political, fiscal and legal situation post-privatisation. Privatisation in relatively chaotic circumstances can never be something perfect and correspond 100% to ex-post wisdom expressed in international agency studies and economic theory books. Sometimes it is better to leave defects of privatisation as they are as trying to remedy them ex-post can cause more upset and undermine the effective rule of law that is a precondition for any long-term prosperity. There are, as experience teaches us, however some reasonably successful ways to manage serious post-privatisation resentment and political dissatisfaction. One needs here to bear in mind that such resentment only arises if privatisation was for the purchaser successful. If privatisation buyers lose money, they never get compensated and sink into mere oblivion. For those who are seen as successful, one needs not only to ask: Was it, with hindsight, too cheap for them to purchase assets that later turned out to be very valuable, but also: What was the risk, the confusion, the uncertainty as the time they bought? In my view, the UK solution to this post-privatisation frustration is instructive: In 1997, the incoming Labour government under Tony Blair levied a non-discriminatory “windfall” tax on privatised utilities. The tax was not prohibitively high; though substantial enough to create political support among the beneficiaries. It was levied in a non-discriminatory way; and all the privatised utilities continued to prosper. Clearly an approach that worked.

Secondly, this issue discusses the evolution of the legally little protected administrative subsoil license towards a contractual format, with greater legal security and protection. I had advised, in 1995, that the production-sharing contract reform – so complex and controversial – would not be necessary if the subsoil license would be converted to a license contract, with legal protection, including access to a neutral system of dispute settlement for foreign investors. The steps now taken are therefore in my view clearly into the right direction.