Volume 3-11 Abstract


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	"Contract Or License? Regulation Of Petroleum Investment In Russia And The Role Of Foreign Legal Advice", By GIUDITTA CORDERO MOSS The oil and gas sector represents potentially the most interesting area for foreign investment in Russia; numerous oil and gas companies have been monitoring for years possibilities in this area, but total investments actually carried out so far show that foreign investors are extremely cautious in engaging significant resources in the Russian petroleum business. This reluctance to effect considerable investments can be explained as a consequence of a lacking stable and comprehensive legal framework for petroleum investments: uncertainty with respect to rights and obligations of the investor, as well as difficulty to predict the economic conditions of the investment, are not an encouraging starting point for engaging in an activity which such a long term perspective as petroleum operations usually are. Great expectations on behalf of the stability and viability of the Russian legal framework arose in connection with the enactment of a Law on Production Sharing Agreements ("PSA Law"): it does not seem, however, that the PSA Law has met these expectations to a satisfactory degree. This article is an attempt to analyse the background and the rationale for choosing an instrument such as the PSA to regulate petroleum investments in Russia; it will focus primarily on the role played by foreign sources, which have been very active in rendering legal advice to the Russian legislator. The rendered advice might have consisted in the mere description of the legal regime provided for petroleum activity by the advisor's own legal system; or the advisor might have elaborated a model of legal regime and recommended it for adoption by the Russian legal system. This article aims at illustrating how the method applied in advising can influence the success or failure of the recommended models. The effectiveness of the descriptive advice might be endangered by the difference between the country where the described model operates and the country that wishes to introduce the described regulation: legal regimes that work satisfactorily in one country might not be appropriate in a different context. Also the effectiveness of the elaborating advice might be endangered by the differences between the country that wishes to introduce the new regulation and the systems used as reference by the advisor: proposals elaborated without taking into account the legal tradition and the surrounding circumstances of the system where they are supposed to operate may be doomed to fail.