Policy change in offshore decommissioning governance: dealing with environmental politics and coping with ecological uncertainty.

Abstract

From the Abstract: “Decommissioning, or the end-of-life phase, of offshore oil and gas structures has increasingly become a topic of interest as more structures are nearing the end of their productive life. Decommissioning activities are complicated operations with different environmental, technical, economic, and safety aspects to consider, which potentially present many economic and ecological opportunities. Yet, we know remarkably little about the environmental impacts of offshore structures and decommissioning thereof on the marine environment. This ecological uncertainty is vitally important in the governance process, particularly in regard to how a variety of management options are negotiated and decided upon in processes of environmental politics. In addition, the decommissioning discussion is a politically potent topic as stakeholders adopt a variety of decommissioning discourses based on their interpretation of what constitutes a responsible approach to decommissioning. This also leads stakeholders to cope with ecological uncertainty and interpret scientific information in certain ways. This thesis addresses how environmental politics and ecological uncertainty may lead to the stabilization or destabilization of policy arrangements by performing a comparative assessment of decommissioning governance approaches in the Netherlands and Australia. I have drawn on theories of Governance and Policy Arrangements and developed a novel framework for classifying decommissioning discourses. Despite the very different physical and political environments in the Netherlands and Australia some similarities were observed with regards to the effect of environmental politics and ecological uncertainty on policy change, which arguably could carry through to policy arrangements elsewhere in the world. In order to reach transparent, participatory, and consensus-bases decommissioning governance, some degree of governance reform is required. This study concludes with suggestions of what such governance reform might look like in order to reach good governance for offshore decommissioning.”