Cameron, Peter

Peter Cameron is Professor of International Energy Law and Policy and Director of the Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy. A graduate of the University of Edinburgh, Peter joined the Department of Public International Law at the University of Leiden in The Netherlands, and during that time worked for The World Bank in Russia, Poland and China and with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok, Thailand. Subsequently, he was appointed to a chair at CEPMLP and soon after, held a chair in EU Energy Law at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. At that time, he contributed to the establishment and early development of the Florence School of Regulation. In 2015 Peter was appointed Director of CEPMLP at the University, overseeing an expansion in student numbers and a widening of the curriculum to include sustainability and energy transition pathways. He has held visiting professorial appointments at the Universities of Madrid (Autonoma), MGIMO (Moscow) and Singapore (NUS). He has also been a visiting scholar at Stanford University, California, and Wolfson College, Oxford. 

Peter plays a leading role in international arbitration as a scholar-practitioner. In Scotland, he led the foundation of the International Energy Arbitration Centre in Edinburgh with the Scottish Arbitration Centre, and is co-Director. He has published extensively in this field, and supports research in this field in his role as Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Global Energy Law and Sustainability (Edinburgh University Press). He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators; a long-time member of the International Bar Association and has served on several of its committees; and is a member of the International Council of Commerical Arbitration. He qualified as a barrister (England and Wales, Middle Temple), and is one of only two lawyers in Scotland to sit as an arbitrator at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), based in Washington DC. In 2021 the second edition of Peter's book, 'International Energy Investment Law: The Pursuit of Stability' (Oxford University Press, 2021), was published, with an expanded treatment of the subject, covering legal mechanisms for protection of all forms of energy and considering the impacts of the 'energy transition' on this subject. It presents an original perspective on energy investment law and through three very detailed case studies assesses the ways in which long-term energy contracts adapt to changes in government policy and regulation. His critical study of energy governance, 'Oil, Gas and Mining: A Source Book for Understanding the Extractive Industries', was published by The World Bank and has since been downloaded more than 83,000 times as an e-book from the World Bank Open Knowledge Repository (see Activities). He has written over 100 articles, papers and monographs, and has a track record of obtaining substantial grants for research, such as from the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office and the Royal Society of Edinburgh (in excess of £2.5 million since 2010).

Peter was elected as Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2013 and was made a Fellow of the Energy Institute in 2018. He is an honorary Professorial Fellow at his alma mater, Edinburgh University. He is Vice-President of the European Federation of Energy Law Associations and chair of its Scientific Committee.

Peter's writings have been frequently cited in arbitral proceedings and by the judiciary such as the Supreme Court of Israel and the Milan Central Criminal Court. He is regularly invited to talk at international conferences and seminars. In 2022 he was the keynote speaker at the 10^th Joint ITA/IEL/ICC conference on International Energy Arbitration in Houston, Texas; keynote speaker at the Annual Budapest Arbitration Seminar; speaker at the biennial ICCA conference in Edinburgh; and chair of a showcase panel at the annual International Bar Association conference in Miami, Florida.

Peter teaches Energy Law to undergraduate students in the Law School and International Oil and Gas Law and Policy to the CEPMLP Masters students. The latter is a core module in the CEPMLP curriculum. It examines key contractual mechanisms that governments and international investors typically use to encourage and sustain investment in petroleum activities, as well as the environmental and sustainability aspects of these contractual forms. All of this is considered in the context of the Energy Transition to a low-carbon economy. He also supervises a cohort of ten PhD students.