There have been issued 80 oil and gas permits in Ukraine recently. However, they are inactive due to corruption and lack of mining operations.

The Prime Minister of Ukraine Oleksiy Honcharuk has told.

“It’s critical for Ukraine to control access to the subsoil. We have developed a bill that will encourage licenses to be returned. It is very simple: you either extract the resource or you pay taxes without profit,” the Head of Government said.

The Prime Minister explained: “The Government will set a monthly rent for the land permits issued more than 3 years ago. The exact cost will depend on the size of the area and the date of issuing permit. In case of deliberate long non-payment, the license will be suspended, and only then will be annulled through the court.”

According to him, real investors will be looked for through transparent e-auctions, and this experience is already successfully working in the USA, Great Britain, Norway, Croatia.

“But in Ukraine so far, 30% of all issued special permits for the use of oil and gas wells are “on hold”. This story will become history,” Oleksiy Honcharuk added.

The Prime Minister said: “The industry is faced with a number of archaic barriers that prevent it from developing. In order to revive Ukrainian gas production, we have already drafted a number of important legislative changes, in particular to the Code of Ukraine about subsoil, to the Law On Oil and Gas and the Law On Production Sharing Agreements. I hope for the support of Parliament!”

It should be noted that tomorrow the new Head of State Service of Geology and Subsoil of Ukraine Roman Opimakh will present the Investment Atlas of the Subsoil User.

“This is a kind of investor guide where objects ready for use are mapped. The information will be updated on a constant basis. The industry needs strong mobilization!” summed up the Head of Government.