§ Mr. QuinnTo ask the President of the Board of Trade when regulations to implement the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive (85/337/EEC) as it applies to offshore oil and gas activity will be laid before Parliament. [27867]
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§ Mr. BattleThe text of draft regulations to implement the 1985 Environmental Impact Assessment Directive (85/337/EEC) as it applies to the offshore industry has been revised following consultation in 1997.
The revised text includes changes designed to ensure that the regulations are workable and enforceable. It simplifies the process for deciding when environmental statements are required and lengthens the minimum time available for public comments on such statements from fourteen days to four weeks. It also introduces penalties for knowingly providing inaccurate information in connection with an environmental statement or for failure to obtain consent or to observe conditions attached to a consent.
I announced on 10 September 1997 that I saw no reason to wait until 1999 to introduce the thresholds introduced in the 1997 amending Directive above which environmental assessment will become compulsory for certain development and pipeline projects. The revised text therefore uses a provision in the 1985 Directive which allows Member States to select appropriate thresholds above which projects covered by the Directive must be subject to environmental assessment, to require assessments of relevant projects which exceed these daily production or pipeline size thresholds. The draft Regulations do not implement the 1997 Directive, which Member States are required to adopt by mid-March 1999.
The revised draft is being circulated by Government Departments and to other organisations which responded to the consultation draft of 1997. The regulations will now be laid as soon as possible after this second round of consultation has been completed, probably in March this year.