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Professor Fenner Stewart has been awarded an Association of International Petroleum Negotiators (AIPN) 2016 Research Paper Grant.Each year, AIPN funds the research and publication of leading, in-depth papers on legal and/or commercial issues of current interest to the international petroleum industry.

Fenner and his co-researchers - Tony Cioni (a partner at Torys LLP and the firm's top international petroleum specialist) and Doug Percell (whose career has primarily focused on frontier and international exploration and development project management in difficult operating environments and on valuing E&P investments and developing entry strategies in countries all over the world) - have received $10,000 to explore "Corporate Risk Strategies in Practice: Safeguarding the Petroleum Industry from the Reputation Costs Associated with the Inadequate Protection of Upstream Assets."

Intended research objectives

Oil and gas operators cannot always negotiate for sufficient control over the teams they hire to perform security services ("Security Forces"). However, when they do, they ought to exercise their control in a manner that avoids the growing "non-technical" costs associated with being responsible for the death or injury of a host state's nationals.

Most operators maintain corporate policies on the use of Security Forces ("Security Policies") based upon the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights. While a laudable first step, this measure alone is insufficient to properly manage the risks in question. Many Security Policies are little more than statements of general principles with little guidance for implementation. Accordingly, operations staff and their legal counsel are placed in risk management scenarios where they need to make time-sensitive decisions without the tools necessary to successfully bridge the gap between these vague policies and the complex situations playing out on the ground. By empirically studying the content and execution of a number of Security Policies, we aim to identify the knowledge and processes necessary to effectively translate the aspirational goals of Security Policies into humane and informed decision-making by Security Forces.

We will conduct interviews with individuals holding key skills in upstream security risk management networks. In doing so, we will map out how Security Policies are, and ought to be, operationalized on a granular level. From our datasets, we will compare the risks and mitigants at play in the implementation of Security Policies in a number of high-risk environments in Africa and Latin America. From this analysis, we will develop a practical diligence framework that can be adapted for the implementation of Security Policies, supporting the improved management of such risks. In addition, this framework will provide the AIPN with the research necessary to start to develop standard form protocols and agreements for the provision of both governmental and private security services.

To this end, our objective is to practically assist AIPN members with implementing corporate security policies for upstream projects. We know that the industry is facing great practical difficulties in this area, and that the aspirational goals of corporate security policies are not necessarily being met—much to the frustration of the legal, commercial, and security personnel charged with managing this risk.