OGA: Update to Meetings Statutory Notice
On 3 October, the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) published an updated Meetings Statutory Notice. It can be found here.
The Energy Act 2016 gives the OGA the power to attend and participate in certain ‘relevant’ external meetings (including videoconferencing and teleconferences) between different companies operating in the UK continental shelf.
This power is not about intervening in everyday conversations or attending internal meetings and the purpose of the Notice is to limit the meetings to which the obligations on industry apply.
The Act places related obligations on industry to inform the OGA in advance of these meetings, provide it with documentation and, if the OGA does not attend, provide it with a written summary of the relevant parts of the meeting.
The main changes to this Notice from that published last year are:
- the list of assets in scope of Operating Committee Meetings and Technical Committee Meetings has been updates to reflect the OGA’s new opportunity matrix
- the definition of joint Operating Agreements (JOAs) has been changed to ensure all JOAs are captured
- new definitions to capture meetings between owners and users of named infrastructure have been added
- a new definition to capture meetings between more than one of the owners of named fields has been added
- some minor drafting changes have been made to increase clarity- including setting out who within a JOA should inform the OGA of meetings.