Russia's Natural Resources Minister, Alexander Kozlov, has announced that amendments to legislation abolishing the declaratory system for obtaining licenses to explore gold and hydrocarbon deposits will take effect on September 1, 2026.

Russia scraps self-reporting for gold and oil exploration licences by 2026

The decision follows years of enforcement practice that demonstrated the mechanism's inefficiency.

As the minister explained, the declaratory approach to hydrocarbon licensing has been virtually unused. Over nine years, not a single deposit was discovered under this system, and exploration volumes under such licenses remained negligible. For gold, the amendments took into account the positions of regions with long-standing gold mining traditions. Particular attention was given to placer gold: currently, around 7,500 licenses issued under the declaratory system are in effect, but they have proven difficult to administer and implement.

Key issues tied to this mechanism include so-called off-contour mining—where gold is extracted from reserves that have not undergone state review or been accounted for in a site's balance sheet—as well as the irrational use of subsoil resources. The new regulations aim to address these shortcomings, Interfax reports.

Oleg Kazanov, head of Russia's Federal Agency for Subsoil Use (Rosnedra), clarified to journalists that federal authorities are finalizing the necessary documentation. The abolition of the declaratory system on September 1 will apply to both gold and hydrocarbons. Instead, the role of the licensing mechanism—where licenses are granted through a predefined list of sites available for geological study—will expand. In this case, Rosnedra, rather than the resource users themselves, will initiate the licensing process by publishing the relevant lists.