This website contains data on the Russian auctions held in 2004-2008 for licenses to explore and develop gas and oil fields.
The Russian Federal Subsoil Resources Management Agency (http://www.mnr.gov.ru) is a federal executive authority that organizes tenders and auctions on granting the rights to use subsoil sites in accordance with the procedures established under the legislation of the Russian Federation.
Each of the auctions is announced through the mass media by the federal or corresponding regional Subsoil Resources Management Agency. The announcement describes characteristics of the field (location, resources, structures), the rules of the auction (participation requirement, date, application deadline, reserve price, deposit, increment), and the terms of use (length of use, exploration conditions, fees and payments.) The companies apply to participate in the auction, and the agency decides which of them to admit to the auction based on their characteristics. The admitted companies then pay the deposit (the reserve price) to participate.
The auction itself is an ascending oral (English) auction. The auctioneer calls out each asking price starting with the reserve price plus one increment. The bidders lift an assigned paddle to indicate a willingness to pay that amount. The auctioneer takes larger and larger bids from the bidders. The auction ends when no participant is willing to bid further. The winner is the bidder who placed the highest bid.
After the auction, the winner pays the difference between his last bid and the deposit and gets the license; all the other participants get their deposits back.
The file provided here contains a limited database of 121 auctions. The work is in progress; more data will be available in May, 2008. The following information is to be added for each of the auctions: regional map of the field, short description of the companies that participated in the auction, and distance to the pipeline. The names of the companies and the fields are in Russian in the original data, but will be translated into English.
