The course Regulatory Law for Petroleum Operations is a fundamental course for anyone who's involved
in the Oil and Gas Industry. In any aspect of petroleum operations the most important
thing is that as petroleum is being extracted that you and the environment are safe, particularly
you. So this course is really about how to keep petroleum operations from harming people
and harming the environment. So what we look at are all these different aspects of petroleum
operations and how the law regulates them. Interestingly there are many things that are
exactly the same whether you are in Nigeria or the North Sea or Australia, and the beauty
of this is the global nature of regulation. One of the fundamental underpinnings when
we are regulating petroleum operations is how the Law is structured and what that does
in terms of regulating. So for example if you look at Deepwater Horizon which occurred
in the Gulf of Mexico, that was under a system which we call prescriptive regulation and
that is where the regulator tells the operator what to do, when and how. Now under that system
we of course had the world's biggest oil spill. Compare that to some of the regulatory frameworks
of things like the North Sea, which is both the Norwegian and the UK system, this is more
objective based, where you have an objective not to spill oil and then it's up to the individual
companies as to how they're going to fulfil that objective. It's this difference in regulatory
style that is at the heart of the Regulating Petroleum Operations and it's these principles
that we explore in great depth, using not just theory, but also looking at mini practical
examples. And one of those practical examples that we look at is Piper Alpha which of course
occurred off the coast of Aberdeen here in 1988. Now one of the big issues about Piper
Alpha is that it marked the end of the use of prescriptive regulation and ushered in
an era of objective-based regulation. And it’s these two different systems which form
the fundamental basis of this course and that's really important for anyone in petroleum worldwide
to understand. Aberdeen has always been at the heart of regulation and regulatory change.
Aberdeen itself is called the oil capital of Europe but probably most importantly Aberdeen
was the place where 167 people lost their lives and this marked the change in the regulation
of health, safety and the environment, and that has also had an impact on the people
who work here. So those that are teaching you are the ones that have got experience
in this regulation. We hold very dear and very close to our heart the fact that 167
men were killed and that we work and strive, both in our professional lives and in teaching
you, about learning how we can regulate better to keep people safe when extracting petroleum.
We start with regulatory theory in the course, but then we build very quickly on to theory
and principles of health and safety regulation, and we study that for a number of weeks. We
then look at the environmental aspect of health, safety and the environment, and that's including
things like preventing harm and what we do when harm occurs, but also who's liable, and
how does compensation occur. We round out the course with some real-world examples and
we study several incidents that have occurred. In particular Deepwater Horizon and also the
Piper Alpha, and what that does is it gives you a fundamental understanding of how we
apply the theory and what we can learn from those practical accidents or incidents that
have occurred. By undertaking this course you'll be learning not just about the North
Sea system, which you might be learning in your workplace, or you could be learning about
the prescriptive system, but we’ll actually give you a thorough grounding in both of the
systems of regulation, and that gives you the capacity to work anywhere in the world
in any jurisdiction. Throughout this course we will be building up your knowledge. So
we start with regulatory theory and then we build towards specific areas, whether its
environment or whether it's health and safety. Along the way there are some little gateways
in order for you to make sure that you understand each of the areas and the assessment will
include real life examples and ask you to make comments on what you would do in real
life. And the idea of this is to be able to apply your learning to the real world.