Recently, the Ministry of Land and Resources ("MLR") has distributed the Control Targets for Land Used for Oil and Natural Gas Engineering Projects (the "Targets") which shall be effective for five years from January 1, 2017.
The Targets relate to adjustments in four respects, compared with previous ones. The first is to introduce legal and policy requirements on the management of land use in Chapter I Basic Provisions, expressly stating that the targets mainly apply to newly built onshore oil-gas fields and projects of long-distance pipeline yards or sites. Where it is indeed necessary for an engineering project to go beyond the scale of land use and the functional zone determined in the Targets, it needs to evaluate the economical use of land and give reviews and argumentations. The second is to add new types of both yards or sites and divisions in the Chapter II Control Targets for Land Used for Oil Field Projects, as the functional zones of land used for oil field projects are adjusted from 10 to 13. The third is to add new types of both yards or sites and divisions in the Chapter III Control Targets for Land Used for Gas Field Projects, as the functional zones for gas field projects are also adjusted. The last is to introduce the diameter of long-distance oil and gas pipelines and division data, as the diameter of natural gas pipelines is adjusted from 800mm to 1500mm and the types of division for large-diameter natural gas pipelines are also increased.