The Sustainability Assessment Model (SAM)

摘要

Business has a fundamental role to play in deliveringrnSustainable Development – the process needed to achieve arnsustainable society. Sustainable Development is becoming anrnimportant issue for the oil and gas industry to address. Therernis, however, a lack of tools for improving decision making inrnthis area. The paper outlines a tool (the SustainabilityrnAssessment Model – SAM) which has been developed tornassess whether or not a project can be said to be “sustainable”.rnA project focus has been adopted in developing the toolrnbecause we believe that greater control over impacts can bernachieved at this level. However, the tool can be used to aidrnspecific design decisions (eg development scheme selection orrnconcept selection) and also to assess an organisation’s overallrnperformance. The SAM assesses the social, environmental,rneconomic and resource usage impacts of a project over its fullrnlife cycle. In the case of a hydrocarbon development thisrnincludes the design, construction, installation andrncommissioning of the facilities, the production of oil and gasrnand the eventual decommissioning of the facilities. This partrnof an oil and gas development is (usually) within the control ofrnthe operator. The SAM, however, extends the analysis beyondrnexploration and production and also assesses impacts fromrnhydrocarbon refining, the manufacture of products and therneventual product use. It also addresses the possibility ofrnremediation and restoration options. The SAM monetises allrnthe impacts so that they can be compared on a like-for-likernbasis. This also allows the impacts to be combined into arnsingle measure (which we have called the SAMi, orrnSustainability Assessment Model indicator) which reflectsrnoverall whether a project is “sustainable” or not.