The management regulations § 42

§ 42 Retention of material and information

Material and information pursuant to Section 24 shall be retained for as long as necessary in consideration of prudent operations. In particular,
  1. anyone carrying out underwater contractor activities, shall retain the operation log from manned underwater operations for 40 years from the last entry,
  2. the operator or the party responsible for operating a facility shall retain meteorological and oceanographic data until they have been submitted to the Norwegian Meteorological Institute,
  3. the operator shall retain material and information on permanent plugback of wells,
  4. the operator shall retain material and information on facilities and waste that have been temporarily abandoned on the seabed,
  5. the operator shall retain material and information on acute pollution and actions against acute pollution with associated follow-up study,
  6. the operator shall retain material and information on environmental monitoring,
  7. the operator shall retain material and information on waste, discharges to the external environment and consumption of chemicals,
  8. the responsible party shall retain material and information on hazard and accident situations, as well as any serious near misses,
  9. the operator and the employer shall retain mapping results that document to what extent employees have been exposed to potential hazardous working environment factors. The period of retention shall be in proportion to the assumed hazardous long-term effects of the exposure,
  10. the operator shall retain information on abandoned radioactive sources in wells.
At the time of expiration or surrender of the production license and specific permission to install and operate facilities according to Section 4-3 of the Petroleum Act, the party obligated to carry out the disposal decision according to Section 5-3 of the Petroleum Act, is responsible for retaining material and information as mentioned in first subsection.
In the cessation plan, the licensee shall account for the material and information the operator shall retain after the disposal decision has been carried out.
When the petroleum activities are terminated, the supervisory authorities can order that material and information as mentioned in the first subsection, be handed over.
Material and information that are not to be retained or handed over according to the first through fourth subsections, may be discarded and destroyed.
Section last changed: 01 January 2018

The retention requirement in the first subsection is a consequence of the duty to keep material and information available pursuant to Section 10-4 of the Petroleum Act. In the comments relating to Section 10-4, second subsection of the Petroleum Act, a condition is set that “a curtailment in the duty to keep material and information available shall not be at the expense of the authorities’ actual needs”, see Odelsting Proposition No. 43 (1995-1996), page 61. Both the industry’s and the authorities’ needs could vary to such a degree that it will not be possible to state a number of years for retaining the respective types of material and information.
The mapping results according to the first subsection, litera i, include e.g. exposure to carcinogenic substances. The retention period for mapping results is given in provisions of the Regulations relating to organisation, management and participation.
The content of potential obligations will depend on the circumstances surrounding the disposal decision as mentioned in the second subsection. The obligation can thus rest with the licensee, the owner or others. Reference is made here to the comments to the Petroleum Act, Section 5-3, second, third and fourth subsections in Odelsting Proposition No. 43 (1995-1996), page 52.
The requirement for an account in the cessation plan as mentioned in the third subsection, entails that the licensee shall describe potential future areas of use for material and information in the cessation plan.
The hand-over requirement as mentioned in the fourth subsection, will normally apply to the party that has a duty to carry out the disposal decision pursuant to the Petroleum Act, Section 5-3, see second subsection.
Discarded as mentioned in the fifth subsection, means a managed selection process in archives and databases to pick out material and information that can be omitted. If the material and the information are limited to the Norwegian Ocean Industry Authority’s management area, and have been sent to the Norwegian Ocean Industry Authority’s official address, the discarding can be carried out assuming that the requirement in the first subsection has been fulfilled. This does not apply to material or information regarding the management system, because this could touch on the management area of the Norwegian Environment Agency, the Norwegian Board of Health and the Norwegian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority. These regulations do not restrict the provisions in the health legislation regarding retention of the health service’s documentation; cf. e.g. the journal regulations based on the Health Personnel Act (in Norwegian only).
Destroyed as mentioned in the fifth subsection, means physically destroying discarded material and information.