Putin sets, heads energy commission with Sechin as secretary

MOSCOW, Jun 15 (PRIME) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin will head a commission to supervise energy issues and environmental security with Igor Sechin, now head of the country’s top oil firm Rosneft, acting as its executive secretary, the president’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday.

“Putin is chairman, Sechin is an executive secretary,” Peskov said, adding that Putin has signed a decree to set up the commission and approved its lineup.

Sechin previously served as deputy prime minister in charge of energy issues under President Dmitry Medvedev, who is now prime minister. After the then prime minister Vladimir Putin, Sechin’s long-standing patron, became president in March, Sechin quit the government to head Rosneft ousting its CEO Eduard Khudainatov.

Last week, Sechin invited CEOs of other oil firms to a lunch on short notice. The heads had to dash from the lunch to a meeting with Sechin’s successor in the government, Arkady Dvorkovich.

Rosneft said that similar meetings were likely to become regular to create an oil club.

The commission will analyze the development of shelf deposits, prepare programs to improve oil and gas transportation, oversee price regulation in the electric power sector, set pricing formulas for oil products and will also work out new taxation programs, and supervise the distribution of oil deposits.

The commission is divided in two working groups: one for energy issues and the other to supervise ecology.

Apart from Putin and Sechin, the commission’s members include Dvorkovich, Economic Development Minister Andrei Belousov, his deputy Stanislav Voskresensky, Natural Resources and Environment Minister Sergei Donskoi, Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov, Energy Minister Alexander Novak, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, Federal Antimonopoly Service Director Igor Artemyev, Federal Customs Service Director Andrei Belyaninov, Federal Mineral Resources Agency Director Vladimir Kirillov, and others.

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