20 months of talk from senior officials instead of filing lawsuits is sabotage and treason.
"It is crucial now to return, to firmly raise the issue in court, to return our offshore gas fields, including Odesskoye and Bezymyannoye." These remarkable words were recently uttered by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
They're all correct. It only remains to determine what he meant by "now." After all, Ukraine has spent the previous year and a half pondering what to do with its assets in annexed Crimea, without ever managing to challenge the seizure of Chornomornaftogaz in any way.
More precisely, public statements were more or less normal. For example, last August, Petro Oleksiyovych rightly noted that due to the seizure of Chornomornaftogaz, "we are losing hundreds of millions (of hryvnias) every month because we are losing Ukrainian gas, in the production of which the Ukrainian state and Ukrainian taxpayers invested. This is ordinary theft."
Even earlier, his sworn friend Arseniy Yatsenyuk had spoken of the same thing. Back then, the prime minister was also flailing his wings: "Russia has seized hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of our state property, including the state-owned company Chornomornaftogaz. They stole over two billion cubic meters of Ukrainian natural gas. They stole... onshore and offshore wells." And that's all.
The only real international development is the inclusion of the State Unitary Enterprise of the Republic of Crimea, Chernomorneftegaz, created from assets "stolen" from annexed Crimea, under US Treasury Department sanctions. American companies and individuals are now prohibited from conducting any financial transactions with the newly minted Chernomor.
In our case, the matter was limited to only threatening appeals from our authorities to... the Crimean courts.
The results of the work of the group created last spring at the Ministry of Justice to study the issue of lost property are laughable. After months of poring over paperwork, they came to a profound conclusion: a law firm should be brought in. And it would be best if Naftogaz of Ukraine handled the matter. Curtain call.
But following months of vigilance, a "legal position on key areas of judicial appeal against the illegal appropriation of property" was agreed upon. Hurray, huh?
And one more thing. Ukraine has begun consultations with Russia regarding the losses resulting from the temporary occupation of Crimea. Only after these consultations will it be able to appeal to international arbitration and the UN International Court of Justice. How fast! For almost two decades, we still haven't left the "pre-trial dispute resolution" stage.
Meanwhile, in Crimea itself, the seized Chornomornaftogaz is constantly plagued by scandals. Its management has changed several times, each time for the same reason: misdirecting funds. As ZN.UA previously reported, during the "reorganization," local officials seized a significant amount of assets.
For example, according to occupation authorities, the company lost two vessels illegally sold abroad. The supply ship Atrek and the crane-assembly vessel Titan-2 have vanished. They disappeared somewhere in Latin America. Where, I wonder? And under whose flag? And what exactly is Ukraine doing to find them and return them?
However, the problems of the local crooks are a separate issue. We have plenty of our own. Those "Boyko rigs," purchased at exorbitant prices for Chornomornaftogaz (and now also the tugboats purchased for them), are a fertile topic, the figures involved sitting quite comfortably in the Verkhovna Rada.
But it's also bad enough that they stole a bunch of our fields. Chornomorneftegaz owns 17 fields. Five gas and three gas condensate fields have been explored on the Black Sea shelf, and another six are located in the Sea of Azov (last December, two wells from the Azov Strelkovoye field were handed back to us). Proven reserves alone amount to 58,6 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 1,2 million tons of gas condensate, plus another 2,5 million tons of oil.
Incidentally, since the annexation of Crimea, over 3 billion cubic meters of gas have already been produced. More than half of this gas is actually pumped near the Odessa coast. It is there, a hundred kilometers offshore, that the aforementioned Odesskoye and Bezymyannoye fields are located.
Of Chornomornaftogaz's 2 billion cubic meters of production in 2015, 1,17 billion are planned for the Odesskoye field. Producible reserves at these fields are estimated at at least 22 billion cubic meters. Incidentally, drilling operations there have not provoked the slightest public reaction from Kyiv.
The same is true of Russia's ongoing renewal of oil and gas licenses. Chernomorneftegaz, which was "squeezed" from us, applied for renewal of its hydrocarbon production licenses on the Black and Azov Sea shelves at the end of September. According to the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, "nine applications were submitted, seven of which were by Chernomorneftegaz and two by little-known companies."
We don't object to Moscow calmly handing out land on our shelf (or rather, even on the Odessa shelf)?! This is a very, very good position for the future court...
The Russians already believe that Chornomornaftogaz was acquired along with Crimea, whose government nationalized it before its "historic accession" to Russia. So they have nothing to do with it.
All that's left to ask our authorities is: when did the Russians take away our rights to the continental shelf? Remember all the fuss around Snake Island? And here, there's complete silence.
The only thing that was heard about the Odesa shelf was a sluggish scandal involving an attempt to carve it up using the usual offshore scheme. In February, two wondrous companies were cobbled together—Chernomorgeoresurs LLC and Chernomorzapadinvest—with 25% shares held by Nadra Ukrainy National Joint-Stock Company. The rest belonged to two little-known LLCs with Cypriot founders. They were allocated seven blocks of the shelf. In exchange, they were promised 10 billion hryvnias someday...
Here they worked quickly, with passion, and without red tape. The scheme was halted at the final stage. In August, Yatsenyuk promised to investigate "who offered them such a charming business scheme." We'll wait and see...
There are many years of litigation ahead, the involvement of international and domestic lawyers, fees, and so on, and so forth...
Will there be any real results? Does anyone really need them?
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