At the Government session chaired by Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov Deputy Minister of Energy Yerlan Akkenzhenov spoke about the work on the development of the geological industry in the field of hydrocarbons, primeminister.kz reports.
He noted that Kazakhstan has significant potential resources that remain unexplored or understudied. In order to improve the investment climate is systematic work to improve legislation in the field of subsoil use.
As part of the amendments adopted in 2023, norms were introduced in terms of: increasing the exploration period in exchange for additional investment in exploration; incentives for the development of depleted (mature) fields; refusal of a subsoil user from drilling based on the results of seismic exploration.
Admprocedures for subsoil use operations and expert examination of basic project documents were also optimised: a notification procedure was introduced for exploration projects at the prospecting stage, as well as environmental expertise after the sectoral expert examination of project documents.
In addition, the amendments to the legislation provide for the reduction of financial and administrative costs for subsoil users and the reduction of the time required to review documents.
In 2024, amendments to legislation on subsoil use are also planned. In particular, it is planned to provide a priority right to subsoil use to investors who carry out geological exploration in poorly explored areas at their own expense; to implement and develop areas in which there is no interest of national companies in the field of hydrocarbons.
The amendments are also aimed at limiting national companies to a 3-year period for submitting an application for direct negotiations from the date of inclusion of the relevant subsoil area in the programme of management of the state subsoil fund. In the absence of applications from national companies within the specified period, the site will be put up for auction.
In order to exclude speculative actions it is proposed to prohibit the alienation of subsoil use rights (share in the subsoil use right) during the first 3 years from the date of conclusion of the contract for exploration and production, since one of the conditions accepted at the auction is the obligation to perform geological exploration (drilling of wells) by the winner. At the moment the draft law is under consideration of the Government Apparatus.
In order to accelerate the involvement of fields in development, the transition from exploration to evaluation under one contract and from exploration to production under ten contracts was carried out.
Two electronic auctions were held this year, at which 15 sites were realised. The final size of the signature bonus was - 32.7 billion tenge, of which to date 9.1 billion tenge has been received by the budget. Investments in geological exploration totalled $82.5 million," Yerlan Akkenzhenov said.
Also, 56 prospecting projects approved by the subsoil user themselves have been submitted in a notification procedure. Thus, each subsoil user saved about two months to pass the state expertise of project documents. This allowed subsoil users to start performing field works faster. For 9 months of the current year subsoil users invested in geological exploration - 125.9 billion tenge.
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