The role of the U.N.'s Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights is an important framework in uniting governmental and corporate approaches to human rights. Of note is the potential reach of the energy sector regarding human rights, as many firms from this industry may operate in sensitive environments. There is thus a need for a human rights corporate framework that recognizes challenges and opportunities specific to the extractive industry. This need was met in 2011 by the European Commission's Oil and Gas Sector Guide on Implementing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

The Oil and Gas Sector Guide describes itself as the European Commission's answer to “[…] sector-specific guidance on the corporate responsibility to respect human rights, as set out in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.” Reflecting parallel origins to the ICoC, this document was developed through “[…] multi-stakeholder consultation” that involved “[…] business, government, trade unions and civil society representatives”, with peripheral input from academics and “[…] members of the Oil and Gas Sector Advisory Group”. Such development allows the Oil and Gas Sector Guide to serve not only the energy sector but a wider scope of “[…] employment and recruitment agencies [and] information and communications technologies (“ICT”) companies”.

Objective and Scope of the Guide

A perusal of the Guide reveals a central aim of applying “[…] the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights to the specific context of the oil and gas (“O&G”) sector.” As with the Montreux Document, the Oil and Gas Sector Guide is not intended to serve as a binding, structured instrument of corporate human rights protection. Rather, it serves to offer “[…] a range of ideas and examples for how to put [the U.N. Guiding Principles] into practice” without providing a structured management system for corporate use. As with the U.N. Guiding Principles themselves, the Oil and Gas Sector Guide is rooted in the three pillars of the U.N.'s Protect, Respect and Remedy framework. Hence, human rights duties of the energy sector are spread across “[…] [the] state duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties [;] […] [the] corporate responsibility to respect human rights [and] […] [the] need for greater access to effective remedy for victims of business-related human rights abuses, through both judicial and non-judicial means.”