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The Centre for Mining, Energy and Natural Resources Law
Professor John Chandler, Co-Director of the Centre for Mining, Energy and Natural Resources
Law
The Centre started in 1990 at a time when there was a reasonable degree of activity
in mining and also petroleum and what we've done is grown the Centre in line with the
growth of those areas to support them. We see Western Australia as being a leader of
mining and energy in the world and we regard it as very important that there are leading
professionals including lawyers to support that development.
The resources sector in Western Australia is going through a very interesting phase
at the moment. Western Australia is the largest exporter in Australia of a number of minerals
such as iron ore and petroleum, but we're seeing very significant development in that
and we expect when current facilities come online that in fact Australia will be the
second largest producer of Liquefied Natural Gas in the world, not only is there development
in that area but also in Shale gas, where the Canning Basin in the northern part of
the state is reckoned to be the fifth largest reserve of Shale gas in the world so we see
very exciting times ahead.
A lot of what we do is basically contract law, but the context in which the agreements
and the matters are negotiated is really important, so there is a lot of technical information
about for example how petroleum is produced or how iron ore is mined, and if you understand
that, then you go a long way to understanding why things are structured in the way they
are. So we're trying to give participants that deep level of understanding and knowledge
of how things work.
The kinds of people who enroll are very diverse. We find there are a number of people who are
working in the industry who want to increase their expertise, but we also get people coming
from government and also people who are with organisations. They are not just drawn from
Western Australia we have a very internationally based group with a number of people coming
from the Eastern states and overseas.
There are two reasons why a practicing lawyer would choose to do one of these courses: the
first is that they don't have any expertise in mining and energy and want to move into
that area; the second is that they are already doing some mining and energy law perhaps with
one of the large petroleum companies based in Western Australia, but they want to increase
their expertise and we find that the people doing the courses are a mixture of these.
So in fact it's a very interesting and valuable experience for people to do the courses because
they are networking with a lot of people in the industry.
A non-lawyer I think would also find these courses very valuable, and indeed we get a
lot of non-lawyers who do them. This is because law is a very helpful discipline for anybody
working in a corporation. When its having to analyse agreements all the time in that
role and law keeps coming up.
We deliver our courses through intensive workshops, which typically take three or four days, and
we've found that the participants in those really enjoy them because they are very practical.
What we do is interleave legal sections with sections from geologists, engineers and others,
to give the commercial context. Because the commercial context is really important in
understanding the law relating to oil and gas and mining and the environment. And we
also find that the participants really enjoy networking and working with other participants,
so we have a number of formal sessions but we also have case studies where people work
together in groups to resolve problems, and those problems are always very current and
practical.
Law.uwa.edu.au/research/cmenrl