On the afternoon of June 8, 2018, the seventy-second lecture of the Luojia Lecture Series on Environmental Law was held at 325 classroom of the law school. Professor Greg William Gordon, Head of law school in Aberdeen University, lectured on the theme of “Current Developments in UK Upstream Oil and Gas Law”. This lecture was presided by Dr Hu Bin, the deputy director of RIEL. Prof. Alexander Zahar, the environmental law clinic lawyer Wang Xinxin and all of the postgraduate students attended this lecture.

At the beginning of the lecture, Prof. Greg William Gordon expressed his gratitude and honor to be invited to the lecture, and briefly introduced Aberdeen and Aberdeen University. He noted that the law school of Aberdeen University rated in 5 in the UK in Complete University Guide. And energy law is a strong specialty in law school. Later, he introduced a joint programmer between Wuhan University and Aberdeen University, and said that he would come to Wuhan University in October to teach energy law course.

The first part of the lecture, Prof. Greg William Gordon discussed “Changes to the UK’s resource management regime through the Wood Review and the legal obligation to Maximize Economic Recovery (MER) ”. Firstly, he noted the industry practice, decision-making and regulatory orientation before the Wood Review. Secondly, he introduced the Wood Report in detail. The Report indicated some basic strategies. For example, the tripartite collaboration of industry, regulator and treasury. Prof. Greg William Gordon said it is hard to change existing management models because of history’s shadow. Later, Prof. Greg William Gordon elaborated on the Infrastructure Act (2015), Energy Act (2016) and MER.

In the second part, Prof. Greg William Gordon introduced “Decommissioning of offshore installations——legal and fiscal implications”. He started from the current situation of decommissioning of offshore installations and introduced the relating international and domestic legal framework. After analyzing the tax and the increasing cost burden of decommissioning, Prof. Greg William Gordon discussed some possible approaches. Then he focused on the MER obligation and its impact upon decommissioning practice in the UK. In the end, Prof. Greg William Gordon gave some concluding remarks.

At the end of the lecture, the students also raised some questions which Prof. Greg William Gordon answered respectively. The lecture ended in a warm atmosphere.

The Wuhan University - Aberdeen University Environmental and Energy Law Joint Research Center was established in November 2017. The two sides chosen energy law as the field of joint research and decided to launch the energy law center master student co-training project. In October, Prof. Greg William Gordon and Dr. Partain from Aberdeen University will teach Corporate Environmental Liability and Oil and Gas Law in RIEL. Students take these courses will receive credits from Aberdeen University. Excellent students from RIEL will have the opportunity to travel to Aberdeen University to undertake the courses and dissertation necessary to complete the LLM.

Prof. Greg William Gordon：

Head of Aberdeen Law School

Member, Association of International Petroleum Negotiators

Teach and research primarily in the fields of commercial contracts in the Energy Sector, upstream oil and gas law, tort/delict and professional ethics and regulation.

Established the highly-successful LLM in Oil and Gas Law at Aberdeen in conjunction with Prof John Paterson.

Co-director, North Sea Energy Law Programme (a joint venture between the Universities of Aberdeen, Copenhagen, Groningen and Oslo providing advanced training to oil and gas professionals)