CEO of Gazprom Neft has argued with Igor Sechin because of taxes

According to the general director of Gazprom Neft, the company pays one of the highest taxes in the industry in Western Siberia.
Gazprom Neft CEO Alexander Dyukov and Rosneft Chief Executive Officer Igor Sechin argued in absentia which of their companies paid the severance tax the most and whether they should ask for increased tax breaks.

Sechin, June 4 at the annual meeting of shareholders in St. Petersburg, said that Rosneft receives the lowest benefits in our oil and gas industry. " Dyukov did not agree with this: “If we normalize [benefits], we will see that Gazprom Neft is paying one of the highest mineral extraction tax rates in the industry in the fields in Western Siberia.” He called for “comparing apples with apples, and not apples with cucumbers” and take into account that Gazprom Neft, unlike its competitors, works on the Arctic shelf (Prirazlomnoye field. - Vedomosti). “Yes, we have benefits on new large projects in the Arctic,” admitted Dyukov.

The difficulties of state-owned companies

“Why shouldn't I ask a question about the same attitude towards all companies?” Sechin asked rhetorically as he compared the Priobskoye field of Rosneft with the Surgutneftegaz project. According to the top manager, Rosneft asks the government to pay attention to the fact that there are hard-to-recover reserves at Priobskoye (permeability is less than 2 milliards, and up to 4 in the Tyumen suite). “It’s harder for us to work,” concluded Sechin, noting that Surgutneftegaz “broke through certain privileges in the Tyumen suite.”

Gazprom Neft is even harder, Dyukov is convinced. He said that the quality of the reserves with which Gazprom Neft works at the Priobskoye field is lower than that of other field developers (developed by Gazprom Neft and Rosneft): “We develop that part of it where there are less-quality reserves. We work successfully, but according to the geological conditions, work on our part of the Priobka is more difficult. ”


According to him, in order to compare who pays more taxes and who has more benefits for MET, you need to compare the quality of stocks: “So you need to compare the size of benefits only for stocks of comparable quality.”

How much pay

According to the reports of Rosneft and Gazprom Neft, the mineral extraction tax for companies in the first quarter of this year was only 1 ruble difference: 12,953 rubles. for 1 ton at Rosneft and 12,952 rubles. for 1 ton at Gazprom Neft. Total for the quarter, Rosneft paid 548 billion rubles. NPD, with production of 53.7 million tons of oil and 15.79 billion cubic meters. m of gas in Russia. Gazprom Neft paid 112 billion rubles. with production of 23.24 million tons of oil and 9.9 billion cubic meters. m of gas.

In February, it became known that Sechin sent a letter to President Vladimir Putin with a request to support the Priobskoye field, reducing the tax burden on it, two federal officials told Vedomosti.

At the end of last year, Rosneft sent a draft amendment to the Tax Code to the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Energy to introduce an additional MET tax deduction for the largest license areas in Western Siberia, quoted Vedomosti’s interviewee. The bill provides that the tax deduction will be received by the fields, licenses for which were issued before January 1, 2018, and recoverable reserves exceed 800 million tons. Only Priobskoye falls under these parameters, the development of which began in 1988, the water content on it (water content in the oil mixture) exceeds 90%, says a person close to the company.

The conditions for the development of the Rosneft Priobsky and Samotlor projects in the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous District are completely different, therefore, it is impossible to give privileges to the Priobskoye field as for the flooded fields, responded Alexei Sazanov, director of the tax policy department of the Ministry of Finance. Rosneft can now reduce the mineral extraction tax due to different coefficients for each well of the Priobskoye field to 80%, the agency representative reminded. And for oil produced from Bazhenov deposits at Priobskoy, the rate of mineral extraction tax is zero. For 2017–2018 the amount of tax breaks for Priobsky exceeded 41 billion rubles., he says. If Rosneft receives additional tax deductions for this field, the amount of lost budget revenues by 2029 will exceed 460 billion rubles, the Finance Ministry considered.