The Six Month Window in the Issuing Decision

Why a closed window is still worth reading

Article 2 of the issuing decision is a transitional provision, and its period ran from the date the rules came into force. Article 3 of the same decision says the decision applies from the date of its publication in the Official Gazette. The decision was signed in 2013, so the window closed years ago.

It is still the clearest statement in the section we transcribed of what regularising an existing operation looks like, and it names a reporting rhythm that an operator can read as a description of what the text asked to be submitted.

Three periods and one condition

The article addresses existing facilities, individuals and others working in the field of NORM waste from the oil and gas industry and from the activities referred to in article 3 of the attached rules, as they stood at the time these rules were issued. It requires them to regularise their position within six months from the date the rules took effect.

Alongside the six months it requires a report every two months setting out the sources that have been reconciled, until the reconciliation of all sources is completed within the specified window. It also allows the window to be extended by three months by a decision issued by the Minister in cases of extreme necessity.

What the article does not fix

The article requires a report every two months and does not name its form, its contents beyond the sources reconciled, or the office it is submitted to. We record that and ask about it rather than inventing a template and calling it a requirement.

It also does not define reconciliation of a source as a technical operation. The word in the article is reconciliation of sources, and the technical content of that is read from the rules themselves, each duty in its own article.

A transitional article beside a standing duty

The six month window was about existing operations at the time of issue. The licensing requirement in article 4 of the attached rules is not transitional and does not expire with a window. Mixing the two produces the wrong conclusion in both directions.

A facility that started work after the decision was never addressed by the transitional article at all, and a facility that existed then is today measured against the standing duties, not against a window that has closed.

What the article still teaches an operator

Read as a description rather than as a live deadline, the article says three useful things about how a regularisation exercise is expected to look.

Frequently asked questions

Technical note

Separate a window from a duty. A window has a start and an end. A duty stands until the text that created it changes.

A permission to extend is not an extension. The article ties the extension to a ministerial decision and to extreme necessity.

Where DITEC stands, and what this text is

ALDuha Institute for Training and Environmental Consulting (DITEC) works in training and consulting only. Building a source list, and training the people who keep the records behind it, is training and consulting work. Measuring a source is not. The Institute does not run a laboratory analysis service, does not calibrate instruments and does not test equipment, and field surveys are carried out through specialist partners. Licensed training is what the Institute offers, and nothing in a training programme or in this explanation is an undertaking that a licence will be issued or that it will be issued within any period.

A note on the authority: the text names the Ministry of Environment. Today that competence sits with the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, Radiation Protection Department. The ministerial decision that an extension would have required is a decision of the Minister holding that competence. The successor reading is ours, not the wording of the decision, and where the decision is quoted, the original wording is kept in the Arabic text of this article.

This article is an introductory explanation of a published regulatory text and is not a legal opinion.