Critical success factors for achieving environmental approvals

Abstract

In recent years, industry has experienced increased regulatory scrutiny and public interest in the environmental approvals of oil and gas activities, with common challenges across industry in areas such as impact and risk assessment, stakeholder consultation and risk and impact reduction measure application. Some critical success factors for a project team to meet its targets for environmental approval are:

• early planning

• access to information

• use of appropriately skilled resources.

Environmental approvals take time, and scheduling and planning for their preparation and submission should be high on the list of priorities when planning a project. Understanding the regulatory process and knowing what level of information is required at each point is critical. Information to support environmental approvals is available in various forms, including referencing previous approval documentation, reviewing scientific literature and leveraging the skills and experience of project team members. With a common regulator across all offshore petroleum approvals, having ready access to the best and most up-to-date information is critical to meet their expectations. The impact and risk assessment process that underpins the environmental approval is complex and requires a step-by-step approach to establish context (both technical and environmental), identify and assess impacts and propose controls, all while seeking input from stakeholders and monitoring performance. Each of these tasks requires different skill sets, and the key to success is in recognising this and responding by finding the right combination of competency and experience in project team resources. This paper discusses these critical success factors and explores in detail the skill sets that best support impact and risk assessment and subsequent environmental approval for oil and gas activities in Australia.