Research On Environmental Protection Law Issues In Joint Development Of Marine Oil And Gas Resources

Along with the development of the global economy,and continuous increase of energy demands in various countries,the international community turns its attention to the development and utilization of oil and gas resources in the international sea-bed area.Since the implementation of joint development of offshore oil and gas resources in the disputed waters was first proposed and put into practice for the first time,there have been a number of cases of joint development of oil and gas resources in the world,and the exploration and production of offshore oil and gas resources has caused lots of related marine environment problems.The international community has gradually paid close attention to environment protection in the joint development of offshore oil and gas,and regarded environment protection as responsibilities and obligations of the developers.The basically unified opinions having been formed by various countries on the "regional" environment protection matters in the United Nations Conventions on the Law of the Sea have become the main legal basis for environment protection in the joint development of offshore oil and gas resources.The detailed provisions in the special conventions on prevention and control of oil pollution,and regional marine environment protection treaties provide legal support for the environment protection in joint development of offshore oil and gas resources by various countries.After continuous exploration and practice,various international environment protection principles have been developed.There are still problems such as lack of strict EIA,establishment mode of effective supervision mechanism,and failure of accident emergency mechanism although the international community has already formed a legal regulation system based on the United Nations Conventions on the Law of the Sea and adjusted jointly by various special international conventions.Thus,it has become a problem requiring to be solved urgently how to construct and improve the legal system for environment protection in joint development to effectively solve the environment pollution.By a variety of research methods such as literature research method,comparative research method,and empirical analysis method,this paper conducts an in-depth research on the environment protection problems in the joint development of offshore oil and gas resources on the basis of referring to a considerable amount of related domestic and foreign materials.Starting from the joint development of offshore oil and gas resources,this paper elaborates related environment protection problems in joint development,and analyzes the pollution generation modes and serious consequences caused.On the basis of comprehensively understanding the problem,this paper mainly describes the legislation status of environment protection in the joint development of offshore oil and gas resources in the international community,as well as the problems in the existing legislation,and introduces the overseas marine environmental protection and regional environment protection in the joint development of offshore oil and gas resources,including the international-level environment protection conventions and special conventions on prevention and control of oil pollution,and summarizes the experience in environment protection in the joint development of offshore oil and gas resources.Meanwhile,by drawing on the overseas experience,this paper proposes the rationalized suggestions such as establishment of the legal system for environment protection in the joint development,improvement of the supervision system for environment protection in joint development,establishment of the environmental event emergency mechanism in joint development,and establishment of the environment damage remediation system.