Russia?s Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko has affirmed that his ministry considers a Sakhalin-3 project auction is a necessity.
At the end of January he had said that the governmental commission for implementation of PSA-agreement had eliminated the results of the 1993 Sakhalin-3 competition.
He supposes that there are no grounds to give ExxonMobil the license on production sharing conditions or usual tax regime for developing Sakhalin-3.
?This means that the deposit's development, if it is found expedient, could be done according to a general scheme, that is, on an auction basis," Khristenko said. "All competitions and auctions in Russia have to be done in strict legal form," he added.
ExxonMobil's operations under the Sakhalin-1 and Sakhalin-3 projects have raised a lot of questions at Russia's Natural Resources Ministry.
