The Development of Environmental Best Practices by the Industry
Authors: Garland Emmanuel 
Published: March 2015

National, regional, and global oil and gas associations have developed since the mid 90's a set of guidelines, memorandums, guidance documents, position papers, etc., on environmental subjects, either to lobby regulators or to promote among their members best practice on environmental issues. Regulators, academia and other stakeholders have also issued related useful documents.

This paper reviews the current and most recent key documents more or less easy to access (some are downloadable free of charge while others are not) which can be used by the practitioners to improve the management of environmental issues, operations and behaviour. It addresses environmental management, reporting, air quality and CCS, water management, solid wastes including NORMs, chemicals, oil spill response, biodiversity, sensitive areas, sound and marine life, decommissioning, and offshore monitoring.

It shows the key role played by the major national, regional or international industry associations in developing guidance documents, in addition to a few other stakeholder initiatives (International Conventions, World Bank, etc.)

Introduction

Almost forty years ago the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (5–16 June 1972, Stockholm) led to a formal Declaration which is generally considered as having laid the foundation of environmental measures.

In fact, a few months earlier, in February 1972, the adoption of the Convention for the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping from Ships and Aircraft also called the Oslo Convention was already an international agreement designed to prevent marine pollution from the dumping of harmful substances from ships and aircraft into the sea. But it had a regional focus only.

Later that year the "Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matters" 1972, commonly called the "London Convention" or "LC 72", was another key instrument which regulates dumping at sea, at a global level this time. It was closely followed by other international agreements, regional or global such as the Convention for the Prevention of Marine Pollution from Land-based Sources (known as the 1974 Paris Convention), or the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (known as the MARPOL Convention).

These instruments and all those numerous ones which followed until today recommend or impose measures to the oil and gas industry. As a consequence, industry responded by creating industry associations specifically aiming at lobbying these conventions, representing the voice of the industry, advocating industry position, and developing internal guidelines which would help their members to address the emerging environmental issues and take part as an official stakeholder - usually through an observer status - to the discussions of the contracting parties. The E&P Forum (later renamed OGP) and IPIECA were both created in 1974. In parallel, API and other national or regional associations (such as ARPEL in the Latin America area) developed specific environmental committees.

One of the outcomes of these initiatives has been the release by these organisations of guidance documents too numerous to be all cited. Most are publicly available and can be downloaded free of charge from the association websites (ref 1–2–3).

Forty years later, what are the key documents/ reference documents used by the industry or the stakeholders?