[show_avatar email=heidi.maher@emc.com align=left avatar_size=30]IQPC’s well organized and well attended eDiscovery for Oil and Gas Seminar is September 26-27 in Houston. Thought leaders from, among others, Hess, Anadarko, BP, TransCanada and Valero, will be on hand to speak to the unique and not so unique eDiscovery challenges facing the Oil and Gas sector. Recent record profits and catastrophic events have put the industry in the spotlight not just for lawsuits but also government investigations and regulatory oversight.
Organizations already have difficulties responding in a timely and cost efficient manner to eDiscovery requests. The industry being inherently global in nature has the added challenge of determining how best to bring information back from certain countries. Many foreign countries, especially those in the European Union have blocking statutes and other privacy laws that prohibit the transfer of data to the United States. The topic I am speaking about is the other challenge this and other highly litigious industries face: how to be proactively prepared for eDiscovery when you are constantly in a reactive mode.
The Oil and Gas industry is sued on a broad range of issues: employment, leases and royalties, mass tort, shareholder derivative, wrongful death, etc. Most, if not all, have some type of eDiscovery protocol or tool for dealing reactively to these suits. However, it is a rare corporation that can say they have reached full maturity on the information management side of the house. Many have room for improvement on how best to reduce their volume of data, improve records management, increase the defensibility of their current protocol, and deal with the specific challenges presented by long-term litigation and supervised remediation.
My co-presenters Ann-Michelle Bowlin of Intertek and Barry Wiggins of Deloitte by virtue of their positions and experience have great insights into best practices that can be implemented in these areas. The takeaways from this session, and the seminar as a whole, will be of immense value to those dealing with these issues on a daily basis.