Oil Contracts and Environmental Requirements: A Case Study of Iran

Economic development is a policy requirement for balancing economic, social, and environmental considerations. Investment and sustainable development contracts have complex relationships with each other. Numerous aspects of investment contracts directly impact sustainable development goals such as poverty reduction and environmental sustainability. From the point of view of sustainable development, to achieve a desirable contractual provision, a balance must be struck between all the process, economic and environmental issues of contracts, in addition to the usual concerns in terms of government revenue. In general, environmental regulations in oil and gas contracts are mainly in the five ways of referring to national environmental laws and regulations, referring to international industry standards, national laws and international standards of the oil and gas industry, or the oil and gas industry standards. International environmental letters and the creation of specific environmental standards are included for each project. At present, the provisions related to environmental issues are observed in detail in the investment contracts of the oil and gas mining industry, but there is also a significant gap in this field. The most important issue in complying with environmental requirements is the non-burning of gases associated with oil, Iran’s main environmental concern. In this regard, unfortunately, Iran’s performance in recent years has not been appropriate, and attention to this issue and the need to manage pollutants is inevitable. Also, one of the unknown aspects of private international environmental law is determining the law governing environmental damage compensation, while Iranian civil law is silent in this regard. Therefore, it is still necessary for oil-rich countries, including Iran, to develop laws and regulations necessary to monitor and control oil operations and establish a system of oversight of the implementation of international oil contracts, especially concerning relevant conditions.

کلیدواژه ها:

Sustainable Development ، Oil and Gas Investment Contracts ، Environment ، Iran