Billionaire Lisin to lose the offshore deposits.

The billionaire Vladimir Lisin, who owns the "Severneftegas" and "Chernomorneftegaz" companies, may lose the right to seek and produce oil and gas in five areas of the Barents and Black seas shelf by the end of 2017. His structures are not included in the list of companies that the government has allowed to continue to explore for and produce oil and gas on the continental shelf on the basis of the licenses issued prior to 2008, wrote the "Izvestiya" newspaper.

The reason is that there happens to be a negative opinion in the presidential administration in the person of Andrei Belousov, the presidential aide. In the past the authorities began to discuss at the high level the allowance of the private companies to the offshore fields, which can only be developed by the state-owned companies since 2008. In the early summer the Government Commission on legislative activities approved a bill allowing the private companies to develop the shelf. But in late July Belousov in a note headed to Vladimir Putin suggested to extend the amendments only to areas in the Baltic Sea, where "Lukoil" has several fields.