Resource and Reserve Valuation Practices in CIS Countries / Практика оценки ресурсов и резервов в странах СНГ

Russia has increasingly become one of the most important centres for the activities on raw commodity assessments in the recent years due to its enormous resources spread out over a huge territory. As Russia is rapidly closing the gap between the requirements of the internationally accepted codes and its own resource assessment standard, the practical reality is that the legacy of the Soviet Union for the assessment of resources is still active and alive today. However, this does not mean the requirements of the old Soviet system, now the Russian system, are redundant or unacceptable to the codes seen in the international scenery; but it is rather a descriptive and useful tool which guides the competent persons and practitioners in a well prescribed way when they are assessing the mineral resources in Russia. As the old Soviet standard has also been adopted into the national legislations in the other former Soviet Union countries similar to the current Russian system, the Russian code has become an important element in reconciliation of the resources in accordance with the criteria defined in the internationally recognised codes for Reporting Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves such as JORC. This article reviews the experience of IMC in resource estimation in both Russia and neighbouring CIS countries in compliance with both the national code and international codes, and the related issues and obstacles faced and dealt by the competent persons <...>