Petroleum Licensing (Production) (Seaward Areas) Regulations 2008

The Petroleum Licensing (Production) (Seaward Areas) Regulations 2008 (SI 2008/225) are a group of regulations passed for the Petroleum Act 1998 that set out model clauses of a petroleum licence agreement, as amended by SI 2009/3283. These are necessary for companies drilling for oil in the United Kingdom.

In Schedule 1 of the Regulations, the model clauses are as follows.

• cl 2, for the grant of a licence payments are to be made
• cl 4, potential for discretionary decision by Minister on term of the licence
• cl 5, potential for ministerial direction that a frontier licence that is going to lapse should continue
• cl 7, power to determine that a first or second licence term should be extended
• cl 14, power to direct that measuring devices be tested, and find how long a fault subsisted
• cl 16, licensee’s obligation to submit work programmes
• cl 17, licensee obligation to submit production and development programmes (Gordon (2012) ch 5). Minister has the power to make directives relative to production and development.
• cl 21, power to approve a programme of Completion Work
• cl 23, Minister consent to potentially harmful modes of working
• cl 24, power to approve appointment of an operator
• cl 41, Minister’s power of revocation, upon breach of the license terms
• cl 42, Minister’s power of partial-revocation
• cl 43, arbitration clause. (1) This does not apply to anything to be ‘determined.... by the Minister’.
• cl 45, power to determine that debris is potentially dangerous to fishing industry and should be removed.

• UK enterprise law