PUBLIC TALK: Comparing the UK approach to exploiting offshore petroleum with Australia - does who dares win?

A public lecture by Professor John Paterson, Professor in Law, University of Aberdeen and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

The petroleum licensing regimes of the UK and Australia were created in the1960s at a time when the offshore petroleum potential of the North Sea and Australia’s offshore was untested and those areas were immature. Over the intervening 50 years the offshore fields of both countries have matured and there is now a more complex, diverse and crowded landscape; where, for example, several small fields with different ownership need to share common infrastructure to be economic. In 2016 because of declining production the UK made a radical change by introducing an independent regulatory authority the Oil and Gas Authority and an overarching obligation on industry to “maximise the recovery of UK petroleum”, or MERUK, meaning that industry had to consider the national interest as well as its own commercial interests. This brought with it what might be called a “use it efficiently or lose it” approach. Now, some two years after this radical change Professor John Paterson will reflect on whether MERUK is working and what the problem areas are. Will the UK win as a result of this daring approach?

Professor Paterson will be introduced by Professor John Chandler from the UWA Law School. Professor Chandler is the Co-Director of the UWA Centre for Mining, Energy and Natural Resources Law and researches how Australia, Norway and the United Kingdom are dealing with the challenges of a mature petroleum environment.