New geopolitics and the interaction between safety and security in petroleum risk governance

The geopolitical situation in Europe changed dramatically with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, immediately causing deep concern about the security of European energy infrastructure. After the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines and sightings of drones around Norwegian oil and gas installations, it became a stated goal to increase the security of Norwegian and European petroleum infrastructure, both through political, institutional and legal measures. Politically and institutionally, international institutions, states, state actors and corporate actors will increasingly have to work together to secure critical petroleum infrastructure. However, coordination, interaction and cooperation between widely different actors on solutions to common problems are often challenging. Differences in objectives, mandate, organisation, sector affiliation and norms for information sharing often create barriers to effective cooperation. The research project INTERSECT explores how the institutional environment around the petroleum infrastructure collaborates on enhancing the security of this critical energy infrastructure. This work identifies both challenges and opportunities in security cooperation between actors at different levels, including NATO, the EU, Norwegian ministries and supervisory authorities, and petroleum companies. The state is responsible for national and territorial security. However, due to incidents targeting critical subsea infrastructure, and companies in the petroleum industry becoming targets of sabotage, companies that own the infrastructure have now been given a role in national security policy. In Norway, this has led to new legal requirements for some petroleum companies. After the Nord Stream explosions, Gassco and Equinor were subject to the National Security Act, and infrastructure these companies own and operate has been designated as basic national functions (GNFs). The fact that an infrastructure or function is a GNF means that it has a critical societal function, and companies are given a greater responsibility for safeguarding their assets. However, also companies that are not subject to the Security Act must adapt to the new threat landscape; the latter forces all companies that operate maritime energy infrastructure, whether they are subject to security legislation or not, to pay more attention to security. INTERSECT conducts research on how companies adapt to new security regulations and threats. In this work, the focus is on company-internal professional and cultural adaptations. This research is led by NTNU Social Research (NTNU Samfunnsforskning AS) and is conducted in close cooperation with key actors in the Norwegian petroleum sector, Gassco, Equinor, Vår Energi and the Norwegian Ocean Industry Authority. INTERSECT is an interdisciplinary social science project that draws on – but is not confined to – the disciplines of political science, organisational sociology, societal security and risk governance. The project builds its findings on the collection of empirical data from document studies and interviews. There has been a high level of activity in the first year of the project. The project participants have presented at several international and national scientific conferences. Furthermore, numerous meetings have been held between the research partners and the industry partners. One visit to an industry partner has been carried out, including a visit to the Kårstø processing plant, where the researchers gained insight into security work at a large facility. The project has also visited the NATO Headquarter in Brussels and NATO's Maritime Command in London. All visits focus on enhanced understanding and data collection. Overall, the work on collecting empirical data is well underway. This includes document studies aimed at actors at all levels of analysis in the project, in addition to interviews conducted with NATO, with Norwegian governmental actors, and with several actors in the industry. Both conference participation, business visits, document analyses and interviews will continue unabated in the time to come. Research dissemination in INTERSECT is also ongoing. The researchers in the project have conducted public dissemination as well as teaching on the project's themes. Several articles and book chapters have also been written or are under development. During the first year of the project, the project has also published an article in the scientific journal Safety Science. During the first year of the project, two PhD candidates have been employed on the project, and master's students are now starting to write master's theses in collaboration with the project.

The geopolitical situation following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put a premium on the security of petroleum infrastructures. The changed geopolitical context represents a sudden and significant shift in the framework conditions for the petroleum sector's risk governance model. The shift involves 1) a more influential international dimension in the petroleum sector’s risk governance, and 2) changes in the intersections between safety and security, at different societal levels. These shifts, and how to deal with them, are the points of departure for INTERSECT. The stronger international dimension involves a new regulatory and supervisory landscape where state security regulations (the Security Act) enter a field where risk governance has traditionally been based on strong sectoral-industrial risk regulation. The new geopolitical situation, and the corresponding changes in the regulatory framework conditions, challenge the sector’s institutional logic and the division of labour between safety and security regulators and supervisory agencies. Changes in power structures, roles and responsibilities emerge, and trigger a need for coordination and collaboration to be able to align matters of safety and security into comprehensive risk governance. The changes also challenge companies’ structures, cultures and practices for risk management. INTERSECT responds to an industrial and societal need to detect and understand the conditions for constructing adequate security risk governance around petroleum infrastructure. Assuming that adequate security governance must be multi-level and multi-actor, INTERSECT studies coordination and collaboration between actors at different governance levels, from the international, through the state to the company level. INTERSECT explores challenges and opportunities for security governance, seeking to identify and overcome collaborative barriers, including the alignment and collaboration between safety and security professionals.