Environmental Challenges Confronting the Oil Industry

Since the late 1980s, when the current tide of environmentalconcern began to rise, every improvement made by the oil industryhas been followed by new demands for further progress. New problemshave been placed on top of the old ones; first smog in the innercities and oil spills on the beaches, then acid rain and forest dieback followed by major tank disasters and renewed attention tourban air quality and finally, climatic change. The purpose of thisbook is to investigate whether the oil industry is able to extendand renew its social legitimacy as it faces its toughest agenda ina century the challenges stemming from its impact on theenvironment and the consequent public questioning of its role insociety. To find out whether and how the oil industry has respondedto environmental issues in general and climatic change inparticular, five indicators of change vision & image, R&D,investments, and government relations have been selected. Thesehave been assumed to be expressions of an environmental strategywhich can be identified as reactive, cautious or creative. Theempirical analysis begins with case studies of the environmentalresponse of five major oil companies: Shell, Exxon, BP, Amoco andStatoil. The next step is a case study of the refinery sector,which is the most environmentally sensitive part of the industry inmany ways. In addition, a brief description of how three industryassociations have tackled the same environmental issues isincluded. The main readership for this book will be policy makers,planners and researchers in the oil industry, and environmentalconsultants.