Official: Russian govt’s oil taxation meeting scheduled for August

MOSCOW, Aug 17 (PRIME) -- A meeting on oil taxation issues chaired by Russian Prime Minister’s deputy Arkady Dvorkovich will take place in August, First Deputy Energy Minister Alexei Teksler told reporters on Wednesday.

“It has been already slated, it’s August,” Teksler said.

The official said that the Energy and the Finance Ministries still have not agreed on a range of issues and the disagreements will be discussed during the meeting.

The government has to tailor the existing mineral extraction tax (MET) individually for each project. The Energy Ministry earlier proposed replacing the outdated MET with an oilfield profit tax, or a tax on oil sales revenue minus development and delivery expenses, for brownfields. The Finance Ministry made a counterproposal to apply an added income tax, or the difference between the cash flow and capital expenditures.

Energy Minister Alexander Novak said that the two ministries had developed a new tax during the discussions and now are arguing on how to make the transition to it.

End