Social License to Operate: Hydraulic Fracturing-Related Challenges Facing the Oil & Gas Industry

The crossroads of urban development and improved technology allowing oil and gas development in new areas can result in contentious community issues. The debate over one of the improved technologies – i.e., hydraulic fracturing – can be highly emotional. Consequently, industry must address community issues, earning trust and therefore a “social license to operate.” This paper provides fundamental knowledge of the social license to operate concept, validates its application to the oil and gas industry, particularly with respect to shale gas development, discusses the current status of social license in the unconventional development sphere, analyzes current ongoing efforts for shale gas developers to monitor and establish a social license, and identifies potential new methods of encouraging, establishing, and monitoring a social license to operate. The paper also proposes a new institutional framework in which to promote the social license to operate, “The Center for Social License to Operate in the Oil & Gas Industry.”

Creating Beautiful Art: Challenging Comfort

Creating Beautiful Art: Challenging Comfort investigates the notion of beauty and its relationship to art while asking what is and can be art. Throughout the work, research supports the concept of beauty elevating art even with the use of atypical, unconventional, or mundane materials. Direct attention is given to this idea by completion of a Creative Capstone Project. I incorporated aesthetics with unconventional materials in order to challenge viewing comfort, as well as added value to the existing body of knowledge concerning beauty in contemporary art. The reflective section summarizes the importance of unconventional materials creating beauty in art in order to progress itself linearly by creating and reinventing the new.