BENCHMARKING In the theory pages of this web site, I have explained that it may not be possible to justify environmental impacts if these are considered in isolation. An emerging technique for assessing the significance of environmental impacts is to consider them in perspective of those caused by comparable activities; i.e. benchmarking. Benchmarking almost always expresses environmental impacts as impacts per unit of production, for instance: kg of carbon dioxide per kilometer traveled, and although this is the way forward for many impacts, it may be an oversimplification in some instances. The pollution associated with the production of oil and gas is not always a function of the amounts of oil or gas that are produced, but subject to the natural conditions of the oil and gas reservoirs, such as the porosity of the reservoir, the viscosity of the oil, the reservoir pressure and the location of the reservoir in relation to existing infrastructure. The benchmark tool that I have developed aims to help offshore operators distinguish between the areas where actual improvements can be made, and the pollution levels that are the natural result of producing oil and gas. Benchmarking can serve several objectives, including: Assess significance; how significant are the emissions or discharges in comparison to similar operations? Identify areas for improvement; if certain emissions or discharges are relatively high, then it may be technically feasible to reduce these. Justify performance; if certain emissions or discharges are relatively low then this would make their reduction less of a priority. Set performance targets; it would make sense to set reduction targets in line with what seems achievable. These objectives are derived from the wider need to prioritize measures to improve environmental performance. The higher-level question to which benchmarking contributes is: “which environmental measures should be taken first?” That question can be approached from a number of angles including the environmental, political, legislative, financial and public concern perspectives. ‘Benchmarking’, a term for industry internal comparative assessment, is becoming increasingly popular as a management tool because it does approach the above high-level question from these differing perspectives. Not directly, but indirectly: by comparing the environmental performance of companies that all experience the same environmental and political pressures. I have undertaken various benchmarking studies for oil companies in the UK. Initially I used Excel spreadsheets, but with the development of a powerful Microsoft Access database, it has become possible to benchmark the environmental performance of individual installations and to interrogate the data very quickly. The database now contains nine years of data on all UKCS oil and gas producing installations. Software licenses are currently held by Amerada Hess, BP, Talisman, ChevronTexaco, Nexen, Britannia, ConocoPhillips and the DTI. Please follow the links below for a more detailed description of the environmental benchmark tool (EBT) and for some insights in the typical environmental performance of offshore oil and gas producing installations in the UK.

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