Alastair Lucas

The new role of law in stimulating industrial innovation and regional development: the Canadian experience with reflexive law in reconciling economic development, environmental protection and entrepreneurship in the energy industry

Social and environmental pressures are having a profound effect on natural resource firms and regional development. The traditional application of law has fallen short in addressing these new societal pressures. This paper uses an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on management and legal scholarship, to explain how stakeholder generated managerial knowledge creation and innovation may be stimulated by innovative approaches to the application of natural resources law. Using the Canadian oil and gas industry as a case study, the article shows that this new managerial knowledge, in turn, provides firms and the regional industry with competitive advantage. In resource-based regional economies facing pressure from global societal calls for sustainable development, law and how it is applied is a critical variable in fostering corporate innovation and regional development.

A transboundary comparative analysis of opportunities for public participation in the regulation of hydraulic fracturing in the Bakken Shale Formation

This is a comparative analysis of how regulatory regimes overlying the Bakken Shale Formation (Manitoba, Montana, North Dakota and Saskatchewan) provide for public participation in government decision-making processes for hydraulic fracturing technology. Three processes are examined and analysed: (1) policy development and rule-making; (2) licensing and operational decision-making processes; and (3) ensuring compliance with licence or approval conditions. Statutory provisions for public participation are often associated with the common law duty of ‘procedural fairness’. A description of the Bakken and an overview of public concerns about potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on the environment, human health and communities are provided.

Sharing the Costs and Benefits of Energy and Resource Activity: a new book by SEERIL’s Academic Advisory Group

This article summarises research in the field of energy and natural resources law, on the subject of the sharing of costs and benefits between developer companies, governments and local communities. It addresses a new phase in the sharing of costs and benefits that is readily discerned in many countries worldwide, and which compels a shift in thinking that is centred more traditionally on environmental and resource royalty regimes.

2014: An eventful year for energy law and policy

This article reviews some of the fascinating events in energy law and policy that occurred during 2014. It does so through the eyes of the Academic Advisory Group to the International Bar Associations Section on Energy, Environment, Natural Resources and Infrastructure Law. The Group prepared The Law of Energy Underground for Oxford University Press publication in early 2014. The book studied many developments in energy law and policy, including shale oil and gas development, geothermal resource development, and subsurface storage and disposal development. This article reviews some of those developments and then expands with others that have emerged since Energy Underground went to press. These new developments pertain to the geopolitics of energy, debates over climate change, judicial regulation of unconventional oil and gas development, and the future of nuclear energy and nuclear waste.

Law of Public Participation in Global Energy and Resources Development: a New IBA Book

‘Public participation’ in natural resource developments is one of the most significant transformations of the last decade, and it promises to be an even more crucial element of mining and energy development in the 21st century. The Academic Advisory Group (AAG) of the Section on Energy & Natural Resources Law (SERL) has completed a two-year study and book on the subject and will report on it at the SERL Biennial Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, in April. SERL will provide a copy of the book to all registrants as part of the Conference proceedings materials.

The North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation: International Environmental Jurisdiction Over the Energy Sector

The North American Agreement on Cooperation signed in 1993 by Canada, the US and Mexico creates a new layer of regulation of transnational environmental issues between these countries. The enforcement provisions of the Agreement have resulted in new institutions and instruments which enhance North American environmental enforcement. However, the process has yet to evolve and it is too early to tell what impact this new regime of jurisdiction will have on the energy sector.