Subsoil users will be obliged to recalculate reserves of deficit raw materials at least once every five years, and in northern and hard-to-reach territories — once every seven. Amendments to the Law “On Subsoil” were prepared by the Ministry of Natural Resources, Interfax reported.
In the distributed subsoil fund — on plots already issued to companies — reserves will be recalculated by the subsoil users themselves, and Rosnedra institutions will verify the data. In the undistributed fund, i.e., the state reserve, Rosnedra will be engaged in revaluation. The reason is that many reserves were approved back in the Soviet period under different economic and technological conditions. The list of deficit materials includes uranium, titanium, lithium, tungsten, bauxites, and rare earth metals.
Without up-to-date data, projects for lithium or rare earth element extraction can be planned based on outdated figures. Recalculation will show where reserves are real and where development is economically unprofitable. This is a step towards raw material independence, but it does not create production by itself. For metals to reach factories, investments and processing technologies are needed.
Read more on the topic:
Never miss our newsAdd this site to your preferred sources to see us more oftenAdd on Google
