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Fossil fuels - At what cost? Government support for upstream oil and gas activities in Russia / Ivetta Gerasimchuk. WWF-Russia &#38; Global Subsidies Initiative (GSI) of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), Moscow, Geneva, Feb. 2012, 122 p.http://www.iisd.org/gsi/sites/default/files/ffs_awc_russia_eng.pdfThe fourth report in the series Fossil fuels – At what cost?, a joint publication between GSI and WWF Russia, the initiator of the study, focuses on upstream oil and gas subsidies activities in Russia. At the federal level, the paper identifies 30 such subsidy schemes in 2009 and 2010; and quantifies the value of 17 of these, amounting in 2009 to US$ 8.1 billion and in 2010 to US$ 14.4 billion. The study concludes with a discussion of economic and environmental impacts of these fiscal instruments. It observes that the identified subsidies are largely focused on developing new fields, including in the Arctic, and not improving recovery and efficiency in existing fields. It also finds that Russia needs to establish a mechanism for monitoring and evaluating the impacts of these subsidies as part of fulfilling its G-20 and APEC agreement to phase out inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies. (© IISD)