Sustainability Strategy Commitments

UKOOA Sustainability Strategy 2002 - First Report 5. Key Processes Supporting the Delivery of our Contribution to Sustainable Development   Commitment No. 63 - Sharing best practice within industry The oil and gas industry is a highly competitive industry.  Competition has been a driving force behind the enormous and continual advances in technology the industry has experienced. There are, however, many areas where cooperation drives better solutions and improved performance, most strikingly in the areas of safety and environment.  This strategy makes numerous references to sharing best practice within the industry, whether through discussion of experience and lessons learned or the exchange of data for benchmarking.  We affirm our commitment to best practice sharing through the industry in non-competitive areas. Progress to date : achievements and difficulties encountered There is a wide range of examples given above of the industry sharing best practice and co-operating among its various parts, in matters which are non-competitive.  Ones which stand out are safety and the environment, but many of the economic and social commitments are, by their nature, co-operative.  The industry has continued to widen and enhance this co-operation. As referred to in Commitment No.61, the most significant progress in this regard was achieved under PILOT with the work of Progressing Partnership.  The aims of this were to identify and address key areas, of a non-competitive nature, where simplification and standardisation of legal and commercial processes would add value and lead to the recovery of more oil and gas reserves from the UKCS. The ten main items identified under Progressing Partnership were: licence holding easier exchange of licences; licence holders commercial code of practice; standard agreements sale and purchase, and joint operating agreements; pre-emption provisions in licences; late field life barriers decommissioning provisions; other barriers to licence trading; access to infrastructure; supply chain partnership code of practice; supply chain activities promoting UK as a regional hub; increasing the adoption of new technology. Some of this work has reached a satisfactory conclusion and arrangements are in place for its implementation, while other parts require further effort during 2002. Separately, the Standard Contracts Committee (originally part of CRINE, now under LOGIC), comprising representatives from across the industry, has continued its work and published Edition 2 of the Wells Services Contract and an SME Contract and an SME Sub-Contract, for the first time drafted especially for small-medium enterprises.  Work continues on updating the eight other contracts in the original suite. BOX: Industry Mutual Hold Harmless Following a change in English Law, the Standard Contracts Committee has developed an Industry Mutual Hold Harmless scheme for contractors working offshore together, where they often find themselves as third parties, in law, with respect to one another.  By joining the IMHH, a range of significant and difficult to quantify risks may be managed in a predictable and less costly way, with each party to the scheme looking after its own people, property and consequential losses, in the event of an accident or loss.  The IMHH which was launched in April 2002 has been welcomed by operators, contractors and the insurance industry.  Such a scheme would have made the resolution of the many and complex claims following the dreadful consequences of the Piper disaster in 1988 much easier and quicker.  It is planned to have the IMHH scheme operational from the middle of 2002. Website References LOGIC Website : www.logic-oil.com Previous commitment [62. Stakeholder engagement] Commitment listing

Sustainability Strategy Commitments