On January 15 Prime Minister Ildar Khalikov, Head of the Department of Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Natural Resource Use in Volga Federal District Anatoly Shatalov, representatives of Tatarstan President’s Office and Cabinet of Ministers, ministries, agencies and industrial enterprises took part in an extended meeting of the Department "Realisation of powers vested on the Department of Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Natural Resource Use in Volga Federal District in the Year of environmental protection. Main tasks on increasing efficiency of performance of environmental regulations in 2014” at Kazan IT park.

Results of work of the department were summarised and priority activities determined at the meeting.

“2013 was the Year of environmental protection, 200 important environmental protection measures were implemented. Results of this work were summarised at the 4th All-Russia ecological meeting with participation of 400 delegates from Volga Federal District,” Anatoly Shatalov said.

According to Anatoly Shatalov , 20 per cent of Russian oil is produced in Volga Federal District, and there are 11 oil refining plants. However, refinery industry is slowly developing, he said.

The amount of oily wastes to be refined makes 660 thousand tons. “We have to take this problem seriously and use the systemic approach to deal with the problem. And we have good examples of how it should be realised,” Anatoly Shatalov said. He mentioned the Republic of Tatarstan as the region where oily wastes are refined under the special programme “Refinery of waste oils in the Republic of Tatarstan”.

In his report Anatoly Shatalov focused on waste disposal and the condition of treatment facilities. He also noted that there are 100 major industrial enterprises and 8 mln vehicles registered in Volga Federal District, thus the problem of air pollution is very urgent.

Summing up, Anatoly Shatalov spoke about plans for the current year. In particular, work on reducing emissions and pollution discharge, interact ion with economic entities on promoting up-to-date technologies should be continued, problems connected with liquidation of environmental damage should be solved, and payments for negative impact on the environment should be controlled.