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"Reducing the business risk of subconscious polarization over environmental issues."
CLIENTS & PROJECTS
The TINA approach is bringing benefit to an increasing number of environmental management projects – some are featured below.
Drilling on a sandbank
An offshore operator needed to drill a well on a southern North Sea sandbank, an area earmarked for protection under the European Habitats Directive. Concern existed around meeting the objectives of the Directive while allowing drilling to take place. To inform the approval process, an environmental statement was prepared which addressed the main issue in detail, while still being concise and accessible. Approval for the well and for the disposal of water based mud cuttings onto the sandbank was granted.
First West of Shetland pipeline
The project consisted of a gas pipeline from the West of Shetland (WoS) via Shetland to an offshore oil production platform located in the northern North Sea. By injecting WoS gas into the oil reservoir, more oil could be recovered, while the gas from WoS would otherwise have been disposed of underground. Whilst ecologically sound, it was feared that the project could attract opposition as a pipeline to the west could open up the WoS area for further development. A new layout was developed for presentation of the environmental impact assessment, which informed the project approval process as well as providing feedback to those who had expressed concern about the development. I achieved this by focusing on the expressed concerns and addressing the environmental impacts within that context, rather than vice versa. The project was approved without legal challenge.
Near shore oil and gas development
The subject oil and gas development is located in one of the most sensitive near shore environments in the UK. A large number of important bird sanctuaries are located within 40km of the development and these could be impacted should an oil spill occur. Furthermore, as the oil and gas produced from the fields are sour they can produce an unpleasant odor. Faced with considerable resistance from stakeholders deeply concerned about the presence of the development, the operator of the development adopted the TINA approach to environmental impact communication. The approach was also used in the renewal of the production consent for the development in 2001. An environmental statement was prepared that addressed the key concern of oil spill risk in significant detail, while also presenting the company’s environmental track record in the context of the promises that it had made during the initial approval process. Renewal of production consent was granted without the usual resistance and subsequent permit applications also went considerably smoother.
EMAS Statements
EMAS statements are annual reports that inform the general public of the environmental impact of companies or business assets. EMAS statements for offshore operations, however, rarely attract comments from the general public and seem to be written more for external auditors - an unrewarding situation. I accepted the challenge to apply the TINA approach to EMAS statements for two offshore oil platforms, both of which are located in the central North Sea. Rather than aiming the statements at an external audience, I aimed them at an internal audience. I used the opportunity to refocus the management of environmental issues within the business units. This resulted in EMAS statements that address the conflicts between the need to protect the environment and the need to maintain profit margins, placing the management of environmental issues into their proper context. A company employee commented that reading the statements gave him more insight into the impacts of the platforms than he had been able to gain over the several years that he had been working with them. Although written for an internal audience, I did keep the statements simple and avoided jargon to make them suitable for external consumption as well. More…
Environmental Management
Significant benefits are realized when integrating the TINA approach into the day-to-day management of environmental issues. Integrating its wider perspective results in a more intuitive and effective environmental management program. It results in the allocation of resources onto the issues that are most important, in depolarization of internal and external relationships and in increased employee motivation. Various elements of the TINA approach have already been incorporated into the environmental management systems of a number of UK offshore operators. More…
Oil spill plans
Oil spill plans needed to be updated to meet new regulatory requirements and to address organizational changes resulting from a company merger. The opportunity was maximized by preparing oil spill plans which not only were fit for purpose and met regulatory approval, but which also addressed wider stakeholder concerns and expectations. The resulting plans are concise and accessible, and illustrate the operator’s emphasis on spill prevention. More…
Benchmarking
I have undertaken various benchmarking studies for oil companies in the UK. In these studies I compare the environmental performance of offshore operators with each other, allowing environmental impacts to be placed in an industry-wide context. The studies comprise eleven performance indicators aimed at identifying best practice and priorities for improvement. These studies are unique in that they compensate for aspects outside the control of the operator, such as increasing produced water volumes and distance to shore. With the development of a powerful Microsoft Access version of the tool, it has become possible to also benchmark the environmental performance of individual installations. The database currently contains nine years of data on all UKCS oil and gas producing installations. Software licenses are currently held by 7 offshore operators and the offshore regulatory agency. More…
Oil Spill Data Analysis
An analysis of UKCS oil spill records was undertaken for an offshore operator and subsequently for the UK oil and gas operators association. The study, which encompasses an impressive 27 years of data, gives the most comprehensive analysis of this data yet undertaken. The report was written to provide an adequate assessment of spill risk and UK operators can utilize it as an effective adjunct to their oil spill contingency plans. In addition, the report provides a solid basis to further the discussions about the management of spill risk represented by the offshore UK oil and gas industry.
This study was subsequently updated and now reflects 31 years of oil spill records. The update has excluded discharges from the produced water systems that were less than 1 tonne in size and thereby provides a more representative analysis of the spill risk. More…
Fuel consumption data analysis
Benchmarking the environmental performance of oil and gas production operations (see above) has brought a great deal of insight into the relationships between the amounts of fuel needed to produce oil and gas and the associated atmospheric emissions. This knowledge was used to independently forecast CO2 emissions for the UK offshore oil and gas industry on behalf of the UK regulators, providing the evidence the regulators needed to allocate sufficient CO2 emissions trading rights to this industry. More…
