When: Friday, February 17, 2023, 12:30 PM - 1:30 PMWhere: 3.1, Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London, 67-69 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, WC2A 3JB
Guest Speaker: Bjørn-Erik Leerberg
On 24 February 2022 Russia initiated a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. How has and will the added complexities from the fall-out of the Ukraine crises affect Norway's energy sectors and its relationship with the EU and the UK?
To provide answers we need to look into why and how Norway evolved into a major petroleum and energy exporter. Half of the country's mountainous mainland is not arable and is located north of the Arctic circle. It has ice-free access to Skagerrak, the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea and the Barents Sea. Large deposits of petroleum have been discovered in the seabed under these waters.
Law has played a fundamental part in enabling Norway to evolve its energy sectors and become one of the world's primary exporters of oil and gas. The continental shelf and the exploitation of its petroleum resources are subject to Norwegian sovereign rights and exclusive jurisdiction. Through political compromises Norway created a robust and predictable governance structure, legal and concessionary regime. The framework paved the way for the development of world class petroleum industry clusters. Treaties with neighbouring states created the legal foundation for several large cross-border unitisations, petroleum production and the largest submarine natural gas export pipeline network in the world. In the 1990s Norway established its sovereign wealth fund, today valued at 13 trillion NOK.
The country is self-sufficient with energy produced from hydro power. The development was enabled through initial legislation passed in 1917 and the creation of a concessionary regime aimed at maintaining regulatory control over the ownership and use of watercourses for energy production. These abundant resources are becoming insufficient. There are, not least for environmental reasons, limited potential for growth in conventional hydro power production. Increasing electrification continues to drive consumption. How did the country deal with the massive push for an energy transition?
Norwegians recognise that climate change, and the new security situation in Europe require the country to take immediate measures and reconsider its longer term strategy.
Bjørn-Erik Leerberg has for over three decades worked nationally and internationally in the energy field as a private practitioner and as a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy. With his unique experience with the offshore petroleum and renewable legal and contractual regimes he advises private- and public enterprises, Norwegian and foreign regulatory authorities, national- and international interest organizations. His work covers natural resource- and energy law, contracts and transactions, administrative law and public international law, legal issues at the intersection between coastal- and flag state regimes, complex cross-border and multi-jurisdictional projects and double taxation treaties.
Leerberg also regularly advises on energy- and technology-related M&A and EU energy regulation. As a private practitioner he has assisted seven foreign government on four continents developing their natural resource legal, concessionary or contractual regimes, as well as managing legal aspects of their commercial interests. As a civil servant he was in charge of all domestic and international law aspects of upstream petroleum activities subject to Norwegian law and jurisdiction, including the legal aspects of ownership and management of state interest or direct state participation, pipeline and cross-border field treaties, as well as drafting and managing the upstream petroleum regime still applied in the North Sea. The regulatory approach and structure of the offshore petroleum regime has inspired numerous foreign regimes and lately also new Norwegian maritime space legislation applicable to areas of activity such as offshore renewable energy and subsea mining.