Galvanising the opposition: social media campaigns and the new risks for the oil and gas industry

Abstract

Globally, the oil and gas industry has been at the forefront of social licence to operate issues for over 20 years: from Brent Spar in the North Sea in the mid-1990s to the Greenpeace-led Lego campaign in 2014. However, the increasing demand from stakeholders for transparency from both companies and regulators, combined with the use of social media platforms to bring disparate groups of people together and globally disseminate information, has created new issues and risks for the industry to manage, often within compressed timeframes. To date, the focus of environmental groups has been on exploration activity in the oil and gas sector. The formation of the Great Australian Bight Alliance to oppose the development of resources in the Great Australian Bight, the Wilderness Society’s freedom of information (FOI) request for BP’s oil spill modelling data (which was the subject of an August 2016 decision from the Commonwealth Administrative Appeals Tribunal) and the rise of the Lock the Gate Alliance in the context of the onshore gas sector are three examples of mixing traditional protest tactics with social media strategies. Using these and other examples, this paper will discuss the new issues and risks that oil and gas companies and regulators have to address as a consequence of social media being added to the stakeholder arsenal, and consider what new issues may arise in the social licence to operate space as the industry begins to address decommissioning and rehabilitation issues.