Abstract
Impact assessments (EIA/ESHIA) are generally required for all major developments, including oil and gas exploration and project development. Since introduced in the 1970ties as environmental impact assessments (EIA), they have been extended to include both social and health aspects. Impact assessments are legally required in most countries, and also prescribed in international standards as the IFC Performance Standards. The basic purpose of impact assessments is to ensure that environmental and social aspects are considered in planning and approval processes, and to allow public participation and stakeholder engagement in the process. Statoil has for long considered impact assessments as being a valuable tool in managing environmental and social risks and impacts, and thus also in managing project risks in general. However, we have over the years experienced (especially in some of our international activities), that the efforts and costs involved in doing impact assessments have increased substantially along with the volume of the paper produced. The documentation ends up describing almost everything, including aspects of no or very limited relevance. External consultants are normally engaged in preparing the necessary impact assessment documentation, and it is seems that in many areas a culture has developed partly driven by the consultants, partly by authorities and perhaps also by developers themselves, to prepare very comprehensive and voluminous impact assessment reports as a precautionary approach and to ensure there are no gaps in the documentation. We see this as a challenge. It drives costs, and makes it difficult to focus on key environmental and social aspects and measures to manage those. Furthermore, voluminous impact assessment documentation may be an obstacle to public participation. This paper will with reference to experiences from projects in different parts of the world discuss measures to ensure that impacts assessments become what they are meant to be – a tool to assist in developing good projects both from an environmental, societal and business perspective.
