"Environmental Practices in Offshore Oil and Gas Activities" , Stavanger, Norway 29-30 June 2000

Opening Address at "Environmental Practices in Offshore Oil and Gas Activities"

by Political Adviser Jo Stein Moen, the Norwegian Ministry of Environment

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure for me to welcome you on behalf of the Norwegian Government to the second international expert meeting on environmental practices in offshore oil and gas activities here in Stavanger.

Management of offshore oil and gas activities in such a way as to protect the environment and ensure sustainable development is of vital importance to Norway, and, I would suggest, to all countries and regions that produce oil and gas. The North Sea is only one of many marine regions where natural resources are being exploited by a variety of industries. The expansion of the offshore oil and gas industry is giving rise to conflicts between different user interests in many parts of the world. For example, offshore activities compete for space with the fishing fleet, and may create local and regional marine pollution problems. They also contribute to global climate change through emissions to air. This is why there is more and more recognition of the need for environmental protection and sustainable development.

The issue of international cooperation on the protection of the marine environment from the effects of offshore oil and gas activities has been on the agenda for several years. The first regional convention on this topic, then called the Paris Convention for the prevention of marine pollution from land-based sources, was signed as long ago as 1974. Offshore oil and gas activities were regarded as an industry comparable to land-based industry, and I think this is the right approach. Similar conventions and action plans have been adopted in many other regions of the world, in particular as part of the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP’s) Regional Seas Programme. I am looking forward to learning more during this meeting about the approach taken in different regions, in particular from the keynote address by Mr. Shafqat Kakakhel, Deputy Director General of UNEP, who I am very pleased to see at this meeting. We will also have special presentations on the Angola and West and Central Africa Region and the North Sea and Arctic Region.

One of the major outcomes of the first International Expert Meeting in the Netherlands in 1997, was the general agreement between all stakeholders that the focus of international cooperation on the environmental aspects of offshore oil and gas activities should be at the regional level. Norway shares this view. We also welcome the recommendation last year from the seventh session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) that, and I quote, "the primary focus of action as regards environmental aspects of offshore oil and gas operations continue to be at the national, subregional and regional levels".

But we do of course also need international initiatives such as this meeting, in order to be able to compare notes and to build on and learn from each other’s experience. Such initiatives are also needed because emissions and discharges from offshore oil and gas operations have global consequences – such as climate change.

The Netherlands meeting and the CSD 7 also recognised the need to share information on the development and application of satisfactory environmental management systems that can be used to achieve national, sub-regional and regional environmental goals. Furthermore they recommended that to promote information sharing, initiatives should be undertaken involving governments, international organisations, operators and major groups.

The website called the Offshore Oil and Gas Environment Forum is a tool for sharing this information. The website has been established in collaboration between UNEP and the Netherlands, Norway, UNCTAD, the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (OGP) - and the Worldwide Fund for Nature. It is run by the UNEP Division of Technology, Industry and Economics in Paris. We will be hearing more about this initiative at this meeting, and "Information Systems and Tools" has been chosen as a subject for one of the working groups. We hope that at this meeting we will be able to find means of enhancing the exchange of experience and information between regions through the website and possibly by other means and to lay the groundwork for a clearing-house mechanism related to offshore oil and gas activities as a concrete follow-up to the recommendation by the CSD.

Dialogue with developing countries is a key priority here in Stavanger. We are aiming to strengthen cooperation between developed and developing countries and regions, and also, we hope, between developing countries. Cooperation in this context means capacity building through information sharing, which is very advantageous because it is not very costly but can be highly profitable.

I want to emphasise the crucial role that the oil and gas industry can play in our efforts to achieve sustainable development. I welcome the industry’s growing recognition of its responsibilities in this endeavour. I am looking forward to the keynote address by Mr. Arve Thorvik, director of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. The discussions in the working groups on environmental management systems, environmental reporting and environmental impact assessment will also be highly relevant here.

The success of this meeting will be judged not only on its outcome but also on our ability to share the results with other interested parties. We will be able to reach a large and receptive audience through our report from this meeting which also will be submitted to the ninth session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development next year.

As many of you probably know, the discussions at this session will focus on issues crucial to achieving a sustainable energy future. We believe this expert meeting will provide useful input for CSD 9.

Access to energy is a precondition for achieving economic growth and social and political development. Greater access to energy means that global energy consumption will increase. Most of this increase will be met by fossil fuels. It will take many years before alternative energy sources can make a substantial contribution to global supplies. It is therefore very important that production, distribution and consumption of fossil fuels should be dealt with in the most efficient and sustainable manner.

Combustion of fossil fuels is the main contributor to climate change through the emission of greenhouse gases. Norway regards climate change as one of the most pressing global environmental problems. We sincerely hope that the parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change will reach agreement in November, in order to ensure ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.

We believe that the preparations for CSD 9 should focus on finding ways for governments and markets to reconcile the apparently conflicting goals of economic development and sustainability in the energy sector. We must seek to identify the solutions that most efficiently reduce the negative effects of energy production and utilisation. What you will be doing here in Stavanger fits very well into this picture.

We believe there are many ways of cooperating in order to mitigate climate change. In particular there are many possibilities for joint climate projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). This makes it possible for developed countries to invest in projects that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries in order to meet their own reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol. The projects must also contribute to more sustainable development in the host country. For Norway it is of great importance to have an ongoing dialogue with developing countries on how the CDM should be developed. It would be most welcome if this meeting could stimulate efforts to make use of the CDM.

By organising this second expert meeting, the Norwegian Government hopes to strengthen the cooperation between governments, industry and other stakeholders on the sustainable management of offshore oil and gas. We are pleased at the strong commitment and active involvement of the Netherlands, UNEP, OGP, the World Wide Fund for Nature and Statoil in organising the meeting. Furthermore I welcome the strong links this meeting has established with the SPE International Conference on Health, Safety and Environment in Oil and Gas Exploration and Production. This gives us a unique opportunity to draw on the findings of the conference and expand them further. I hope that we will be able to continue this fruitful relationship and that a third expert meeting can be held in conjunction with the next SPE/HSE Conference.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered in Stavanger, the oil and gas capital of Norway. More than 50 countries are represented, and there are representatives from governments, the industry, international governmental organisations, international financial institutions and NGOs. We have limited the number of participants in order to encourage discussion and an open exchange of views. These are important issues and we hope significant progress will be made. I wish you a successful meeting.

Thank you for your attention