State Oceanic Administration, Administration of Environmental Impact Evaluation of Offshore Oil Exploitation Projects Measures

Promulgated: May 17 2002
Effective: as of date of promulgation
Applicability: These Measures shall be complied with when any enterprise or operator carries out any offshore oil development projects in internal waters, territorial seas, contiguous zones, exclusive economic zones and continental shelves of the PRC, and other sea areas governed by the PRC (Article 2). For the purposes of these Measures, "enterprise" means a domestic legal person company engaged in private activities of offshore oil exploitation and "operator" means an entity that is responsible for carrying out the operation in a cooperative offshore oil exploitation activity in accordance with an oil exploitation contract (Article 17).

Main contents: Simultaneously with the formulation of an oil and gas field overall exploitation plan, an enterprise or operator shall select an environmental impact evaluation work unit (the EIE work unit) through appointment or public invitation for bids to conduct an environmental impact evaluation on the project (Article 3). The EIE work unit must have proper qualification certificates (Article 4). The data and information for the evaluation must be obtained from monitoring institutions recognized by the State Oceanic Administration (Article 5). Before formulating an environmental impact report, the enterprise or operator shall prepare an environmental impact outline, which shall be submitted to the State Oceanic Administration for examination and approval (Articles 6 and 7). An approved outline shall be the basis for conducting the environmental impact evaluation (Article 10). An environmental impact report shall be subject to preliminary examination by relevant authorities (Article 13). The report that has passed preliminary examination shall be submitted to the State Oceanic Administration for final approval (Article 14). The approved report shall be submitted to the State Environmental Protection Administration for the record (Article 16).
Related legislation: PRC, Oceanic Environmental Protection Law and PRC, Administration of Environmental Protection in Offshore Oil Exploration and Exploitation Regulations