Resource Areas in the New Institutional Environment

The article demonstrates that today the dynamics of development and production of mineral resources in resource specializing regions may differ significantly from the canonical scheme - i.e. there is no gradual and steady depletion of natural resources within mentioned territories. The combination of several factors may again move resource regions that used to be «hopeless» to the stage of growing production. These factors are: a modern knowledge economy, an adequate resource mode (norms, rules and procedures that «master» the process of development of natural resources) and developed and available infrastructure of mineral resources extraction. As an example the author considers the USA oil-producing states (Texas, Louisiana and North Dakota) which showed rapid growth in production of natural gas and oil in the last few years. The author sees the accumulation of a «critical level» of economic activity (infrastructure, the number and diversity of companies in the oil and gas sector and the availability and quality of human capital) as the main cause for the development of shale hydrocarbons in these states. These considerations are very important for Russia: the development of heavy oil deposits in Tatarstan, bringing into development the deposits of the Bazhenov formation in Tyumen Oblast and the future oil extraction from bituminous minerals in Yakutia will occur under the same laws (with some Russian specificity, however).