OREANDA-NEWS. The second meeting of a work expert group of TRANSNEFT JSC was held. The main subject of the meeting was the theme of oil thefts from the Company's trunk oil pipelines. The meeting was attended by M.Barkov, Vice-President of TRANSNEFT JSC, S. Khardykin, Deputy Vice-President, V.Fedorov, General Director of the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center, A. Shaposhnikov, associate professor of a specialized criminal procedure and criminalistics department, representatives of the Ministry of Inner Affairs of the Russian Federation, as well as representatives of social and ecological organizations and representatives of an expert community.

S.Khadyrkin reported that for the last three years from the total amount of taps, 112 cases (8%) resulted in oil spills. He admitted that these taps are the consequence of activity of organized criminal groups, and the stolen oil often goes to processing to small oil processing plants. The most criminogenic regions in this regard are considered as follows: Samara region (42 taps), Khanty-Mansijsky Autonomous District (22 taps), Irkutsk region (21 taps) and Dagestan (20 taps). According to the Company's materials, the amount of illegal taps into TRANSNEFT's oil pipelines was reduced in 2012 in 1.2 times in comparison with the previous year.

The participants of the meeting noticed that the main troublesome question is the practice of investigation of criminal cases regarding oil thefts from trunk oil pipelines. So, within the period since 2008 to 2012, only 143 cases from 1291 (that is 11%) were taken to court, while investigations of other 1077 (83.4%) criminal cases was frozen, and the rest 12 criminal cases were withdrawn due to different reasons. From 390 persons targeted in the investigations of criminal cases taken to court, only 361 were criminated, notably that 224 persons of them were given a suspended sentence.

Following the results of the meeting, the members of the Expert group came to a conclusion, that for an effective opposition to criminal invasions to the objects of pipeline transportation, it is necessary to make corresponding alterations in the Federal Law of the Russian Federation “About Licensing of Certain Types of Activity”. For the moment this Law allows inclusion of oil and oil products transportation, storage and processing into a list of such types of activity, where a license is not obligatory. Besides, in the closest time it is necessary to raise a question regarding acceptance by the State Duma of the Russian Federation of a Federal Law “About making alterations into some RF legislative acts concerning the question of creation of a departamental security service for insurance of safety of objects of Fuel and Energy Complex”, which will vest a right to TRANSNEFT JSC to create its own departamental security service.