Problems of Improving the Mechanism of Natural Rent Extraction in the Interests of the Resource Owner

Differential natural rent is a special type of income that reflects the favorable natural characteristics of the rent formation object that belongs to the owner of the resource and is subject to extraction in its favor. In oil production, such natural characteristics include the initial concentration of reserves (the ratio of the initial extracted reserves to the area of oil saturation); deposit size (the magnitude of the initial recoverable reserves); depth of reservoir formation; oil viscosity in reservoir conditions; stock generation; flooding of recoverable products; initial well flow; technological coefficient of oil extraction; economic and geographical factors. Based on this, with respect to mining rent, its tax extraction in favor of the owner of the subsoil - the state - is inappropriate as the tax cannot provide the full flow of differential mining rent to the federal and other regional budgets. Thus, the mineral mining tax, which, even taking into account the existing differentiation of its rates, does not depend on the specific conditions of production, and the differential mining rents are practically not extracted in modern conditions. To ensure a complete extraction of differential mining rent in the state’s income, it is proposed to employ the mechanism of calculated prices, which were used in some sectors of the mining industry in the conditions of the planned economy. When using calculated prices, oil-producing companies will receive as income a normal profit and the corresponding part of the quasirent in order to stimulate activities aimed at improving the technical level of production and increase its effectiveness. The amount of mining rent for this field will be determined as the difference between the production cost of this field in the market and calculated prices. Then the deposit will be paid at a calculated price, which is based on the cost price of this field based on standard costs plus normal profits. If there are deposits with similar natural conditions of rent formation and closest levels of regulatory costs for oil production, it seems appropriate to arrange them into groups for which a single price will be calculated based on the average specific regulatory costs for oil production plus normal profits. The use of the calculated price mechanism will significantly take into account the specific natural conditions of specific deposits or their groups, due to the use of the regulatory costs for oil production for calculations. Thus, the use of the calculated price mechanism will provide a nontax extraction of differential mining rent and increase the efficiency of the oil and gas production taxation system.

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