Transportation of Oil and Petroleum Products via Trunk Pipelines: Problems and Tasks of Legal Regulation

The author proposes consolidating the provisions governing relations pertaining to the operation of trunk pipeline transport within a single federal law, in order to eliminate gaps and conflicts arising in law enforcement practice. The absence of a single specialized federal law inevitably entails fragmentary regulation of the industry by a multitude of disparate regulatory acts. The adoption of a federal law on trunk pipeline transport of oil and petroleum products would make it possible to define the legal status of the pipeline system and the status of the operator, since currently the concept of a trunk oil pipeline and a trunk petroleum product pipeline differs across regulatory legal acts. Furthermore, a specialized regulatory legal act is necessary, on the one hand, to serve as a unified source of governing the relations in the oil pipeline industry pertaining to a variety of issues, and on the other hand, to regulate the procedure for granting access to the commodity market for the transportation of oil and petroleum products, and to establish clear boundaries of zones with special conditions for the use of territories, within which certain regulatory provisions apply. In the absence of appropriate regulation, courts are forced to be guided by various construction or other technical regulations and rules, which to a certain extent prevents the uniformity in judicial practice and, as a consequence, creates uncertainty for participants in civil transactions. The consolidation of legislation in the field under study will make it clearer for the end user, counterparties of Transneft PJSC (which holds a dominant position in the oil and petroleum products transportation market), and state authorities. Enshrining the basic provisions governing relations in the field of trunk pipeline transport, including those previously absent from legislation and by-laws, at the level of federal law will make it possible to avoid many court disputes and reduce the risks of offenses due to the complexity and fragmentation of legislation.