A new sustainability analysis technique for the design of oil production facilities

Abstract

The alignment of social, economic and environmental aspects within Sustainable Development Goals is of paramount importance in the oil industry. However, current methods used to conduct project analysis fail to consider these aspects in light of company's sustainability policies. In this article, a technique for a Preliminary Sustainability Analysis of the Enterprise-PSAE is proposed. The method developed uses a participatory action research methodology, based on successive case studies applied to real projects of a large oil company in Brazil. The PSAE makes it possible to identify “Actions for Sustainability-AS's” and evaluate their impacts on the three pillars of sustainability (economic, environmental, and social). When considering the “materiality test” and the “monetary aggregation” for measuring the impact of “AS's” on the sustainability pillars, PSAE contributes deeply to improving the assessment of sustainability indexes. Thus, the PSAE inhibits subjectivity in these assessments and aligns the project with the company's sustainability report. PSAE was applied to oil facilities projects, enabling a comprehensive vision of the pillars of sustainability. Moreover, PSAE presents good usability and compatibility with the project environment, in addition to offering relevant information to guide the decision making process of engineering managers in the direction of the company's sustainability policy.

Keywords

• Sustainable development
• Sustainability assessment
• Petroleum
• Cleaner production
• Project management