The crossroads of urban development and improved technology allowing oil and gas development in new areas can result in contentious community issues. The debate over one of the improved technologies-i.e., hydraulic fracturing-can be highly emotional. Consequently, industry must address community issues, earning trust and therefore a "social license to operate." This paper provides fundamental knowledge of the social license to operate concept, validates its application to the oil and gas industry, particularly with respect to shale gas development, discusses the current status of social license in the unconventional development sphere, analyzes current ongoing efforts for shale gas developers to monitor and establish a social license, and identifies potential new methods of encouraging, establishing, and monitoring a social license to operate. The paper also proposes a new institutional framework in which to promote the social license to operate, "The Center for Social License to Operate in the Oil & Gas Industry." I. Introduction Within the past decade, two key technologies have dramatically changed the landscape of oil and gas development, in turn drawing a great deal of attention to the "Shale Revolution": horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. 1 These technologies, coupled with population growth and urban sprawl, have attracted a great deal of scrutiny to shale development. These technologic breakthroughs have also led to a paradigm shift in energy scholarship. Many shale resources that were previously considered unrecoverable are now economically recoverable. Interestingly enough, a significant portion of these shale resources encroach upon urban developments. As many as 300 million people around the world across six continents occupy land overlying a shale reservoir. 2 Large-scale industrial extraction of shale will no doubt impact these urban developments. Whether or not the impacts will be positive or negative for these local communities largely rests with industry's approach to development. 3
Environmental courts and tribunals: changing environmental and natural resources law around the globe There has been a 'world-wide "explosion"' of tribunals and courts focusing on lawsuits involving environmental issues, according to the world's pre-eminent experts, Professors George (Rock) Pring and Catherine Pring, who for more than a decade have studied the development of these institutions. 1 According to the Prings, this development is 'dramatically changing the playing field for environmental justice around the world'. 2 Knowing about this development is vitally important to attorneys, legal academics, enterprises, civil society groups and others all around the world since it underscores the need to understand the new-found and important role of environmental courts and tribunals (ECTs). Lawyers representing parties involved in all manner of energy, natural resources and environment cases and issues must take account of these new bodies. If these legal professionals are not familiar with ECTs, from both procedural and substantive perspectives, they risk not responsibly representing their clients' interests. As Rock Pring points out, 'Many of the leading ECT judges are viewing their cases now through a lens of sustainability as set out by the United Nations, nations, and states and provinces,' adding '[t]hese lawyers are not going to find an "old fashioned" courtroom in these ECTsettings'. 3 As defined by the Prings, environmental courts (ECs) 'range from fully developed, independent judicial branch bodies with highly trained staffs and large budgets all the way to simple, underfunded village ECs that handle environmental cases one day a month with rotating judges'. 4 On the other hand, environmental tribunals (ETs) 'range from complex administrative-branch bodies chaired by ex-Supreme Court justices, with law judges and science-economics-engineering PhDs, to local community land use planning boards with no law judges'. 5 The explosion, according to the Prings, 'is being driven by the development of new international and national environmental laws and principles, by recognition of the linkage between human rights and environmental protection, by the threat of climate change, and by public dissatisfaction with the existing general judicial forums'. 6 This expansion has engendered significant attention for the way in which it has changed judicial responses to environmental problems, according to Brian J Preston,
The International Association of Oil and Gas Producers a (OGP) has been reporting the safety performance on behalf of the upstream oil and gas industry since 1985. Over that period there has been a significant reduction in the fatal accident rate (FAR) and improvements in the lost time injury frequency (LTIF).In an effort to protect and improve the health of its personnel, the industry has, for the first time, started to collect more detailed occupational illness data from its operations around the world. This paper presents the results from the year 2000 occupational injury and illness data collection programmes. The main database for this period represents over 1.6 billion hours worked, an increase of 36% compared to the 1999 dataset. Thirty-nine companies contributed safety performance data, from operations in 71 countries. Eight organisations responded to the call for occupational illness information, providing 235 million workhours of data.It is shown that although there has been an increase in the total number of reported fatalities, the FAR remains similar to previous years due to the increase in the number of working hours reported.The LTIF has continued to show improvements compared to previous years, with the year 2000 data showing the lowest value recorded to date.The most common types of incident leading to fatalities were vehicle related incidents, and persons being struck by moving or falling objects.The first year of collecting detailed occupational health data has highlighted a number of problems which will need to be addressed in order to improve on the consistency and volume of this potentially valuable dataset. a Formerly E&P Forum
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