The Oil is Dying? Long Live its Heritage!

Oil is a dangerous product. Its transport, storage and refining present numerous environmental, health challenges and local, national, European regulators have taken steps to locate it in space since the beginning of industrial oil drilling in the 1860s. Key leaders of the oil industry have also served as policy makers and aimed to keep legal constraints (decrees, laws, taxes) as limited as possible to prevent any harm to the interests of their industry. Overall, anticipatory law making is missing.

Laws established for oil are limited to select aspects; they ignore precaution and sustainability principles for instance. The pollution and the risks they generate limit the opportunities for the future re-use of the zone, and there has been little done on the law making scale to guide oil spaces. Using the case of North West European ports that have emerged as oil ports for their respective countries over the last 150 years and with a specific focus on Dunkirk in France, this thesis examines the emergence and application of spatial and environmental laws regulating oil practices to help the development of anticipatory measures.