NCOC imitating environmental activities

On October 19, at a meeting with subsoil user companies of Atyrau, Chairman of Environmental Regulation and Control Committee Daniyar YERENCHINOV told about his visit to D Island and ministerial plans to severe environmental laws:

'I was on D Island and got convinced that NCOC doesn't even have any plans to introduce new production monitoring procedures, although the amendments we adopted to environmental legislation come into effect at the beginning of the next year. We will seriously talk to the company on this issue.'

Yerenchinov noted that despite subsoil users' huge funding of environmental activities, the whole picture is not changing -- in contrary -- it worsens from year to year. Firstly, because they include everything -- changing rods of pumping units, changing pipes, etc, into the list of environmental actions. Virtually these refer to scheduled maintenance.

'Therefore, we will shorten the list of required environmental actions. It will then clearly specify what is an environmental action and what is a routine maintenance or repair,' he said.

The Environmental Ministry is also considering unexpected audits for 1st category facilities without long-lasting alignments with prosecutors. Given this, 2nd, 3rd and 4th category organizations as well as small and medium business entities will be audited within scheduled procedures.

By Laura SULEIMENOVA