Russia is an important state when it comes to the extractive industry, with exports of USD 319 billion in 2022. This places the Federation as the second largest exporter of raw minerals, the first being the United State of America. This category of exports ranks first in the Russia’s total exports. However, there are a number of problems in this industrial branch, some with an impact on economic stability and state security.

The Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Mikhail Mishustin, announced on July 29 that efforts for the geological exploration of new deposits will be intensified. Recently, the “Strategy to 2050 for the development of the mineral resource base” was approved.

The strategy updated all forecast indicators and identified a number of main tasks to achieve the objectives, including the discovery of new deposits. To this end, we will support a comprehensive study in all territories, in particular in hard-to-reach regions, including in the Arctic and the Far East.

MIKHAIL MISHUSTIN

The baseline scenario includes the stabilisation of the country’s reserves and mining at the current level. The target scenario consists of an increase in the mineral resource base to meet the demand for minerals needed in key industries.

The strategy provides for the priority of geological exploration in new regions, for the exploitation of strategic minerals (manganese, uranium, chromium, titanium, tungsten), the accelerated authorization of the exploitation of such deposits and the stimulation of their development.

Russia is one of the world’s leading countries in terms of mineral extraction. Why this emphasis on the discovery of new deposits?

The strategy noted that the share of hard-to-recover reserves in hydrocarbon production is increasing. The reserves of certain types of strategic minerals, the document shows, currently do not exceed 25 years.

The quality of solid deposits is in a gradual process of decline, while mining and technical conditions are becoming more complex. Regions where new mineral reserves are being discovered are increasingly isolated and difficult to integrate into the country’s industrial system without considerable investment in infrastructure.

According to the strategy, all significant mineral resources are divided into three groups. The first group includes raw materials with sufficient proven reserves until 2035, in any development scenario: natural gas, helium, coal, copper, nickel, cobalt, platinum group metals, iron ores, apatite ores, potassium salts, tin, bromine and certain types of rare metals.

The second group includes resources that may not sustain the current industrial level until 2035: oil, gas condensate, gold, silver, diamonds, lead, zinc, antimony, and high-purity quartz. According to the strategy, the most important task in this case is to identify large deposits, including non-traditional ones, which requires the use of new methods for their exploration.

The third group includes minerals in which there is an import dependency: uranium, chromium, titanium, bauxite, molybdenum, tungsten, lithium, beryllium, zirconium, niobium, tantalum, rare metals, rhenium, graphite, fluorine. The document states that significant reserves of almost all types of rare minerals have been discovered in Russia, but they are not sufficiently exploited.

New deposits discovered in hard-to-reach regions could substantially increase Russia’s mineral reserves, but “if processes are not changed, Russia may face a shortage of essential resources.” This forecast was given by Sergei Neuchyov, an expert in the field of mining, former deputy general director of the Research Institute of Mineral Raw Materials of Russia, on the website Rogtecmagazine.com.

Neuchyov emphasized the financial (but also organizational) situation of this industrial branch. Certain mining companies, with a monopoly on certain resources, are bankrupt, as is the case with the company that extracts manganese. In other cases, the monopoly is held by solid companies but there is no activity, as in the case of the tungsten mine owned by Rostec.

Photo source: Roman Shalenkin