ADVISOR - AIPN

A complete review by Sam Dunkley will appear in the
next issue of the JWELB, December 2012.
relatively short time.
This article also gives
an account of some
of the challenges that
this country will face in the future
in order to maintain its position as one of
the largest hydrocarbons producers in Latin America.
First legislative actions to shape the
environment of the shale gas business in
Poland in 2012: prospects for further changes
Jędrzej Górski
In Poland, the new Geological and Mining Law of 9 June 2011
entered into force on 1 January 2012. Some seemingly minor
changes introduced by the new law will significantly facilitate
the operation of mining enterprises that are now prospecting
for shale gas. What has not been resolved by the new act,
however, is the fiscal model for the shale business in Poland
in terms of both the one-off initial fee and the subsequent
exploitation royalties.
New Commissioning editor of JWeLB
Sarah Harris became the Journal’s new commissioning
editor July 1. She has been a journal commissioning
editor with OUP since 2005, working on the Journal of IP
Law & Practice. Prior to that she was a senior publishing
editor with UK law publisher Sweet & Maxwell, part of
Thomson Reuters. She has worked in the field of law
publishing since 1994, and her academic background is
in Law with French, with an LLM focusing on comparative
law.
“Disastrous Decisions – the Human and
Organisational Causes of the Gulf of Mexico
blowout”
Professor Andrew Hopkins 1
(CCH, paperback, ISBN 978 1 921948 77 0)
(Reviewer: Sam Dunkley 2 )
Summary
Andrew Hopkins is probably the world’s leading Professor on
safety issues, but this is no “academic” text. This is a practical
and readable summary of why the disaster occurred, and what
the industry needs to do to prevent a recurrence. It will be
recognised as the leading text in this area, and will be a key
resource for all stakeholders –politicians, regulators, investors,
IOCs/NOCs and the drilling and service companies. It should also
serve as a catalyst for discussions among all these stakeholders
– including between operators and non-operators.
In just 194 pages 3 Hopkins summarizes the key themes from
thousands of pages of reports and literature generated since
(and before) Macondo on major hazard risk issues. Most
importantly – as his title indicates – he concentrates mainly not
on what happened, but why: “It is not enough to know that
people made mistakes; we need to know why they made these
mistakes if we are to have any hope of preventing them or others
from making the same mistakes again.”
Hopkins wrote in an earlier book - “Mindful leaders feel a
constant state of unease” 4 . Not every AIPN member is an
industry “leader”, and clearly the main responsibilities lie with
our colleagues/clients in line management and relevant
functions (drilling, operations, safety, procurement, HR). But we
certainly need to be mindful, share the “state of unease”, and
contribute to the industry’s improvement efforts to the best of
our ability.
We need to study this work and discuss the issues with
those clients/colleagues, including at Board level. And a related
issue for us is that the bar is being raised both in terms of the
liability of directors and officers in some regimes (e.g. the
developing case law on “corporate manslaughter ” in the UK)
and arguably in terms of the “reasonable and prudent operator”
standard under our JOAs.
Professor Hopkins has done the industry a service in
producing this remarkable text, building on his experience of
major accident enquiries over the past 20 years - and we should
take advantage of it.
1 Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the Australian National University, Canberra
2 Solicitor; Senior Principal Counsel, Upstream, BG Group plc
3 Including two well chosen appendices and thorough footnotes, bibliography and
index.
4 He discusses “mindful leaders” in this 12 minute video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyqNWrkz7hs . Another notable video (55
minutes) in which he appears briefly is on the Chemical Safety and Hazard
Investigation Board’s landmark report on the Texas City refinery disaster:
http://www.csb.gov/investigations/detail.aspx?SID=20&Type=2&pg=1&F_All=y
SEPTEMBER 2012 • 31