Petroleum Act

The Bulletin, The Journal of the Association for Petroleum Acts Administration, Apr. 1971. 

We have shown that the EU Gas Directive has resulted in an amendment of the Norwegian legislation. The Petroleum Act has been revised and new Regulations are issued to incorporate the requirements of the Gas Directive. 

This aspect is also influenced by the state ref. Petroleum Act Sect. 10-9 on liability for independent contractors, and Petroleum Act Ch. 7 on liability for pollution damage. 

Naturally, the most general statute applicable to offshore petroleum activities is the Petroleum Act ig()6. This act contains several sections on various safety aspects of the activities, covering the whole range from safety for personnel to availability of installations (see further on this in Subsection 5.4.2 (a)). 

While the Petroleum Act by its very purpose is directly applicable to the petroleum activities, the other statutes are applied to these activities by specific provisions to that effect. The details are complex and to some extent difficult to interpret. Also, the acts partly overlap, both in substance and in scope of application. The total picture thus becomes somewhat complex, to put it mildly. 

The common scope of application for all the regulations is generally defined by reference to Sect. 1-4 of the Petroleum Act, with some adjustments following from the parallel provisions contained in the other acts upon which the decree is based (see Subsection 5.3.1). This implies that the basic criterion is whether the matter in question is petroleum activit , defined in the Petroleum Act as all activities associated with subsea petroleum deposits , and further defined by examples of such activities (Sect. 1-6 (c) and (e)-(i)). We need not go further into this for our purpose it suffices to note that the decree covers all aspects of activities that reasonably can be considered to have such a link to offshore petroleum activities that they may be relevant for safety in that activity, ° including activities related to certain facilities onshore. 

The Petroleum Act (and the other relevant acts) and the various regulations provide two types of such means of enforcement the administrative and the criminal sanctions. The imposition of sanctions is based on the positive provisions of the safety legislation combined with the general principles contained in administrative and criminal law. 

Approvals, licences and so forth may be revoked if provisions stipulated in or pursuant to the Petroleum Act are violated seriously (in which case a single violation is in principle sufficient) or repeatedly (in which case neither of the violations in principle need be serious). The power vested in the supervising governmental bodies by this provision is restricted by the general administrative law principle of proportionality applied to an evaluation of the nature of the violation, what will... 

Revoking a licence - or even an approval - may under the circumstances be a rather drastic reaction. A more flexible alternative, introduced by the Petroleum Act Sect. 10-16, is therefore using coercive fines the issuance of an administrative order (e.g. that the operator should take or refrain from taking certain actions for safely reasons) may be linked to a threat that violation of the order will result in a daily fine, payable for as long as the violation lasts. This does not constitute a criminal sanction, just an administrative strong pressure on the operator. 

Finally, the Petroleum Act Sect. 10-16 also empowers the supervisory bodies to order a halt in operations that impose a safety hazard - that is, those that violate general or specific provisions of regulations or individual decisions. This, however, must be considered to be a direct means of ensuring an aeeeptable level of safely rather than a means of enforcing compliance with safety provisions that merely indirectly aim at reducing risk. ... 

The Petroleum Act authorises criminal sanctions in the form of penalties or imprisonment for wilful or negligent violations of provisions stipulated in or pursuant to the act Imprisonment is naturally not relevant in relation to corporate bodies, but they may, on the other hand, be subject to very substantial fines even if no individual physical person acting on the company s behalf can be fined, for example, because they cannot be proven to have acted negligently (or wilfully). 9... 

The general obligation follows from the Petroleum Act Sect. io-6 5° The licensee and other persons engaged in petroleum activities comprised by this Act are obliged to comply with the Act, regulations and individual administrative decisions issued by virtue of the Aet through the implementation of systematic measures . ... 

Petroleum act Section i-6 definition licensee, physical person or body corporate, or several such persons or bodies corporate, holding a licence according to this Act or previous legislation to carry out exploration, production, transportation or utilisation activities. If a licence has been granted to several such persons jointly, the term licensee may comprise the licences collectively as well as the individual licensee. 

Petroleum Act, section 1-6 Definition Operator anyone executing on behalf of the licensee the day-... 

Petroleum Act, 1996. Act 29, November 1996. No. 72 relating to petroleum activities http //www.npd.no/en/ Regulation s/Acts/Petroleum-activities-act/. 

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