"The government has not ordered us to do this, so we will do it ourselves," Alexei Kudrin told journalists on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. "We will conduct an analysis and draft proposals."
Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said June 7 that Gazprom could rake in unplanned income of up to 400 billion rubles (about $15 billion) this year along, and proposed taxing the company's windfall revenues.
But Arkady Dvorkovich, the head of the Kremlin administration's expert department, poured cold water on the idea. "We understand Gazprom's long-term program, its plans, and the funds that Gazprom really does need to implement its [long-term development] program," he said.
Another Kremlin source said two days after Kudrin's comments that the government had rejected the finance minister's initiative. The source said Gazprom was a state-owned company and it would be pointless to tax its profits only to return the funds later.