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
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