Government Support to Upstream Oil & Gas in Russia: How subsidies influence the Yamal LNG and Prirazlomnoe projects

The analysis of the Yamal LNG and Prirazlomnoe projects in the Russian Arctic indicates that while government support is used to make otherwise uneconomic fields viable, the 'manual control' of tax breaks for 'cherry-picked' projects results in excessively large rent transfers from taxpayers to companies. The document notes that a lack of quantitative estimates makes it impossible to determine if the social benefits of these developments outweigh their social costs and environmental risks.

• The Russian government uses specific support measures to make oil and gas field developments economic that would otherwise be uneconomic under the standard benchmark taxation system.
• The practice of providing ad hoc tax breaks and infrastructure investments to specifically selected projects leads to excessive rent transfers from the government and taxpayers to private companies.
• There is currently insufficient quantitative data to establish whether the overall social benefits of these Arctic developments exceed their social costs, which include significant environmental risks.

APA

Fjaertoft,, L. P. L. (2014). Government Support to Upstream Oil & Gas in Russia: How subsidies influence the Yamal LNG and Prirazlomnoe projects. International Institute for Sustainable Development. https://www.iisd.org/publications/report/government-support-upstream-oil-gas-russia-how-subsidies-influence-yamal-lng

Chicago

Fjaertoft,, Lars Petter Lunden,Daniel. Government Support to Upstream Oil & Gas in Russia: How subsidies influence the Yamal LNG and Prirazlomnoe projects. International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2014. https://www.iisd.org/publications/report/government-support-upstream-oil-gas-russia-how-subsidies-influence-yamal-lng.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Fjaertoft, |first1=Lars Petter Lunden,Daniel |title=Government Support to Upstream Oil & Gas in Russia: How subsidies influence the Yamal LNG and Prirazlomnoe projects |publisher=International Institute for Sustainable Development |date=9 July 2014 |url=https://www.iisd.org/publications/report/government-support-upstream-oil-gas-russia-how-subsidies-influence-yamal-lng |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{fjaertoft2014government, author = {Fjaertoft,, Lars Petter Lunden,Daniel}, title = {{Government Support to Upstream Oil \& Gas in Russia: How subsidies influence the Yamal LNG and Prirazlomnoe projects}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2014}, month = jul, url = {https://www.iisd.org/publications/report/government-support-upstream-oil-gas-russia-how-subsidies-influence-yamal-lng}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }