8.—(1) The Offshore Petroleum Activities (Conservation of Habitats) Regulations 2001(1) are amended as follows.
(2) In regulation 2(1) (interpretation)—
(a)after the definition of “offshore oil and gas activities” insert—
““OGA” means the Oil and Gas Authority;”;
(b)in the definitions of “relevant function” and “relevant power”, after “Secretary of State” insert “or the OGA”.
(3) In regulation 3(1) (application of directives)—
(a)after “Secretary of State” insert “and the OGA”;
(b)after “shall exercise” insert “their respective,”;
(c)omit “conferred on him”;
(d)for “he” substitute “each”.
(4) In regulation 5 (appropriate assessments)—
(a)before paragraph (1), insert—
“(A1) The OGA shall not grant any Petroleum Act licence, consent or authorisation without the agreement of the Secretary of State.”;
(b)in paragraph (1)—
(i)for “granting” substitute “agreeing to the grant of”;
(ii)after “any consent,” insert “or”;
(iii)for “any approval” substitute “granting any consent or approval”;
(c)in paragraph (3), for “grant any such licence, consent, authorisation or approval” substitute “agree to the grant of any such licence, consent, or authorisation or grant any such consent or approval”.
(5) After regulation 21 (use of electronic communication), insert—
22.—(1) The Secretary of State must from time to time—
(a)carry out a review of these Regulations;
(b)set out the conclusions of the review in a report; and
(c)publish the report.
(2) In carrying out the review, the Secretary of State must, so far as is reasonable, have regard to how the Directives(2) (which are implemented by these Regulations), are implemented in other member States.
(3) The report must in particular—
(a)set out the objectives intended to be achieved by these Regulations;
(b)assess the extent to which those objectives are achieved;
(c)assess whether those objectives remain appropriate and, if so, the extent to which they could be achieved in a less burdensome way.
(4) The first report under this regulation must be published before the end of the period of five years beginning with the day on which this regulation comes into force.
(5) Subsequent reports under this regulation must be published at intervals not exceeding five years.”.
S.I. 2001/1754, amended by S.I. 2007/77, 2007/1842 and 2010/1513; there are other amending instruments but none is relevant.
The Directives are defined in regulation 2(1) of S.I. 2001/1754 as the Habitats Directive and the Wild Birds Directive (which are further defined in that regulation).