The ministry has worked out a number of amendments to a bill on Subsoil Use, which will determine a procedure for drawing up lists of deposits to be offered for development as part of investment tenders.
"After the bill is approved we plan to lease at least six deposits... This will help to attract investments worth 800 billion rubles into these projects and to create 31,000 jobs," the ministry said in a statement.
The subsoil use bill sets out criteria and procedures for classifying deposits as strategic. These will include oil fields with reserves above 70 million metric tons (513 million bbl), natural gas deposits with over 50 billion cubic meters, gold deposits of more than 50 metric tons, copper deposits of over 500,000 metric tons, and all continental shelf deposits.
