Meeting the advocacy challenge

Abstract

The oil and gas industry is not only in the business of petroleum exploration and production – we are, effectively, in the business of advocacy. The reality is that we can’t be good at one aspect of our business without the other. We need the confidence of our investors to spend large sums to build our projects without, in the short term, making a single dollar in return. We need the confidence of government that we can manage all the groups and organisations that have an interest in our work. We need the confidence of regional people who welcome us into their communities and residents in metropolitan areas. And we need the confidence of a range of other opinion leaders, many of whom live in cities that have no direct experience of our projects and operations. But we have not been faring well. Until last year Queensland was effectively the only Australian jurisdiction with no restriction on exploration and development. We have the facts on our side in policy debates. But that is not the point. People’s perception is the reality. If someone else sets the agenda for us then the best we can hope for is to break even. That is not enough. We need to do much more to avoid the moratoriums that loom in the future.

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