Completing The Rules For Exploring And Exploiting Underground Brine Resources In Weifang

The northern coastal areas of Weifang City are rich in undergroundbrine resources. The so-called underground brine is gathered in theunderground salt content greater than3.5%of the liquid mineral. Itis a limited and valuable mineral resources, has the supply,belonging to a certain sense, renewable resources, but by no meansinexhaustible. Since the1990s, Weifang City use the unique resourcesadvantages to vigorously develop the salt and bromine chemicalindustry,16million tons annual output of crude salt, bromine120,000tons, and the annual income of50billion yuan, accountingfor1/4of the local fiscal revenue, which become the pillarindustries in the northern region of Weifang city. Disorderlyexploitation, waste of resources, environmental pollution and notstandardized, the problem appears to affect the brine resourceutilization and sustainable development of the salt and brominechemical industry. The resource has become depleted brine trend.In the21st century, in order to regulate the exploitation ofunderground brine production and sales order of the developmentprocess and related products, Weifang has taken a series of reformmeasures, mainly in the specification of property rights management,strict market access and strengthen government regulation in threeaspects which included practicing a strict underground brine miningrights to approve access system, no longer developing a new salt andone-time bromine projects, and implementing the bromide-generation,given the bromide salt, winter bromine prime cut-off system, toimprove the comprehensive utilization rate of the brine. At the same time, in order to solving the "more, small, scattered, weak" problemof brine enterprises, Weifang began to implement the brine enterpriseintegration. As of2011in northern the number of brine enterprisesreduced to98, and all of them have reached the scale of more than300,000tons of annual output of crude salt.These measures have achieved some success, but the legal system ofunderground brine mining development is still flawed, mainly for thefollowing three points: firstly, the property rights of theunderground brine resources are not clearly defined; secondly,underground brine mining development industry access system is notperfect; thirdly, the Government is lack of supervision, and lawenforcement is also inadequate. Only improving the relevant systemsand regulations to address these three issues, can we achievesustainable development and utilization of the brine resources, andimprove the efficiency of resource use.Therefore, it is necessary from the perspective of the legal systemto regulate brine mining development market. Specific measuresinclude: clearing underground brine define property rights,establishing and improving the property rights trading market,improving the relevant laws and regulations; developing perfectsystem of approval of access indicators and the approval of thebromine industry access regulations, in order to keep the small-scaleand technology-poor companies out of the market; defining governmentfunctions, establishing specialized law enforcement agencies, andintensifying law enforcement to try to establish the brinecomprehensive development zone and implement the management of inter-administrative divisions.