Abstract
Most oil reserves are located in developing countries, which often do not have the regimes required to comply with international standards. In developed countries, new technologies such as framing explain the need to develop the necessary laws and regulations and their reflection in the drilling and development contracts. In the present chapter, with a comparative study of oil contracts, including the new generation of oil contracts of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IPC), the environmental conditions contained in these contracts have been studied and analyzed. The main purpose of this study is to review the solutions provided in international agreements, analyze the current status of laws and regulations of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and provide the necessary solutions according to the current situation of oil operations areas in Iran. The results of this chapter, besides its ethical value, can be useful for policymakers and lawyers practicing in the field of oil and gas contracts.
TopEnvironmental Protection And Oil Contracts
Although the discovery of oil has positively influenced human life and caused a lot of income to enter the countries with oil resources, its negative effects on the environment cannot be ignored. Drilling wells and extracting oil have had devastating traces in the environment. Examples include pollution of land, sea, and groundwater. Oil drilling requires a lot of equipment, which makes a big hole in the ground. The infiltration of oil into the water and soil around the oil pipelines causes people living near the wells to contract diseases. Transporting oil by sea and oceans may risk that crude oil will leak out of its reservoir and pollute the environment. Oil spills were the result of oil infiltration into the waters of the seas or oceans. After a while, seabirds and mammals are trapped in the oil and die. “In 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William of Alaska caused the worst oil spill in North America several years ago. This caused 38,800 tons of reservoir oil to expand to 1,200 miles. About 1,000 otters and 300,000 to 400,000 seabirds were killed off the coast”(Sabour, 2015). The problems do not end there. The transfer of oil to industrial sectors of society and its consumption in cars or factories causes air pollution, acid rain, and climate change.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Transboundary Responsibility: Defined in the international law context as an obligation to protect one’s environment and prevent damage to neighboring environments, UNEP considers transboundary responsibility at the international level as a potential limitation on the sovereign state’s rights. Laws that limit externalities imposed upon human health and the environment may be assessed against this principle.
Precautionary Principle: One of the most commonly encountered and controversial principles of environmental law, the Rio Declaration formulated the precautionary principle: To protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of complete scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation. The principle may play a role in any debate over the need for environmental regulation.
Prevention: The concept of prevention can perhaps better be considered an overarching aim that gives rise to a multitude of legal mechanisms, including prior assessment of environmental harm, licensing or authorization that set out the conditions for operation and the consequences for violation of the conditions, as well as the adoption of strategies and policies. Emission limits and other product or process standards, the use of best available techniques, and similar techniques can all be seen as applications of the concept of prevention.
Public Participation and Transparency: identified as necessary conditions for “accountable governments,... industrial concerns,” and organizations generally, public participation and transparency are presented by UNEP as requiring “effective protection of the human right to hold and express opinions and to seek, receive and impart ideas,... a right of access to appropriate, comprehensible and timely information held by governments and industrial concerns on economic and social policies regarding the sustainable use of natural resources and the protection of the environment, without imposing undue financial burdens upon the applicants and with adequate protection of privacy and business confidentiality,” and “effective judicial and administrative proceedings.” These principles are present in environmental impact assessment, laws requiring publication and access to relevant environmental data, and administrative procedures.
Polluter Pays Principle: The polluter pays principle stands for the idea that “the environmental costs of economic activities, including the cost of preventing potential harm, should be internalized rather than imposed upon society at large.” All issues related to responsibility for environmental remediation costs and compliance with pollution control regulations involve this principle.
Equity: Defined by UNEP to include intergenerational equity - “the right of future generations to enjoy a fair level of the common patrimony” - and intragenerational equity - “the right of all people within the current generation to fair access to the current generation’s entitlement to the Earth’s natural resources” - environmental equity considers the present generation under an obligation to account for long-term impacts of activities and to act to sustain the global environment and resource base for future generations. Pollution control and resource management laws may be assessed against this principle.