Voluntary Ecosystem Management Agreements

While the conventional approaches to industrial ecosystem management is to establish laws mandating compliance, voluntary agreements negotiated between environmental regulators and industry are becoming increasingly popular.  While there are clear advantages to the supplementation of voluntary environmental agreements, such as flexibility and speed of implementation, there should be a certain criteria met to ensure transparency, ambition and efficacy of these efforts. The following are some examples of voluntary programs relevant to oil and gas drilling operations.

Environmentally Friendly Drilling Scorecard

Natural Gas STAR Program