Environment Report 2014

6. Significant Issues and Activities

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Oil & Gas UK’s Environment Directorate has been working with the organisation’s members in three key ways from 2013 to 2014. 6.1 Provision of Evidence The UK offshore oil and gas industry is controlled and regulated through a broad range of national and international legislationwhich govern how it operates in the sharedmarine environment part of the uniqueNorth Sea ecosystem. The legislation requires industry to understand the environment it is operating in so that the potential impacts of operations can be fully assessed. This understanding comes through the evidence gathered from environmental surveys, research studies and from reviewing academic publications. The same evidence is used to assess the impact that new legislation might have on the industry. Oil & Gas UK continues to review new environmental legislation and presses for regulatory reform, where necessary, to minimise potential impacts on operations and the industry’s competitiveness. In 2014, Oil & Gas UK worked with its members to provide evidence on a variety of proposed legislative changes to government, policy makers and other North Sea stakeholders through formal consultation, informal dialogue, engagement in forums and events. This includes the following: 6.1.1 European Offshore Safety Directive The European Commission (EC) published a draft Regulation on offshore oil and gas safety in October 2011 following its review in response to the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil & Gas UK supports the general objective of seeking to raise safety standards across European offshore oil and gas operations, but believes a Regulation would have dismantled the comprehensive post-Piper legal framework in the UK and would have been a huge administrative burden to apply without significant safety improvement. As a result, Oil & Gas UK participated in an active campaign to change the proposed legislative instrument from a Regulation to a Directive and, on 28 June 2013, the EC published the Directive 2013/30/EU on the safety of European offshore oil and gas operations. The objective is to set minimum requirements to reduce as far as possible the occurrence of major accidents related to operations and to limit their consequences. The Directive must be implemented by European Union Member States by 19 July 2015. The Department of Energy & Climate Change and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) are working collaboratively to transpose the Directive into UK law. Oil & Gas UK’s directorates in health, safety and employment issues, environment and operations have been working closely with its members and the regulators to provide the industry perspective on the proposed regulatory changes. Most recently, through engagement sessions with its members, Oil & Gas UK coordinated and submitted an industry response to the formal consultation on proposals for the transposition of the Directive into UK law. The Directive places new requirements on operators to consider as part of their OPEP and will result in changes to the Merchant Shipping (Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Co-operation Convention) Regulations 1998. These new requirements include further detail on response equipment, effectiveness, alignment with national plans, monitoring and assessment in the OPEP. Oil & Gas UK has been actively working with its members in the past year to understand the new requirements and provide supporting materials to help operators meet their obligations.

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