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Sustainability in the oil business: Issues, strategies and progress
Abstract
Oil is the major primary energy source that keeps running many aspects of the modern life at least in developed countries. Meanwhile oil raises two important environmental concerns: it is extracted from a pool formed by natural mechanisms millions of years ago facing exhaustion due to high rates of use in the last century and the life cycle of oil and oil products is disturbing ecosystems at a level that threatens wellbeing of more and more people. Oil industry is hosting the largest and amongst the most profitable businesses in the world. How they become aware about their potential role in supporting the progress toward sustainability and what actions were taken in this direction will be examined envisaging outlining responsible business models for one of the key players in both economy and environmental protection. © 2015, SRAC - Societatea Romana Pentru Asigurarea Calitatii. All rights reserved.
Activity by big oil and gas corporations has significant social and environmental impact. The present study focuses on the values publically posted by 25 hydrocarbon corporations on their official web-pages. Five general categories of these values are outlined, namely regarding business itself, staff, society, environment, and 'philosophy'. The analysis allows insights into how business- and staff-related values are projected by the majority of the considered hydrocarbon producers. Social values are announced by 48% of the companies, and environmental values are stated by 40% of the companies. The diversity represented by environmental values is smaller by three times than that of the business-related values. The social values are rather detailed, whereas many environmental values are of very general character. Apparently, society and environment are underrepresented among the values of the major hydrocarbon corporations under consideration. The preliminary geographical analysis shows that the problem of underrepresentation of social and environmental values exists in all regions of the world, especially strong apparently in Africa. Several recommendations for improvement of the stated values are provided.
In the scenario of global competition, the territorial dimension of development is assuming an increasing strategic role as the global dimension emphasizes the challenges of strategic positioning and the defining role for the territories which have to struggle with new forms of competition. To cope with new levels of competition development strategies should be identified to enable an increase in competitiveness, both in the local context and in the global context, but in terms of sustainability. The objective of this paper is to contribute to the broad debate on sustainable competitive development in a regional key, highlighting the importance of the close link between the competitive position of a given territorial context and the protection of the integrity of natural resources, including cultural factors and the landscape. However, this requires the adoption of behavioral patterns of business and individuals working in a long-term perspective and based on the principles of social responsibility. The strong interdependence between the firm and the external environment implys that the corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a fundamental element for safeguarding environmental heritage and culture resources and therefore, more generally, the environmental sustainability of regional systems. In this scenario, the water buffalo supply chain in Campania region (South of Italy) presents an explicative case to understand the huge potential opportunities inherent to environmental protection and sustainable development paths and how CSR can really become a source of competitive advantage and a differentiation tool.
The main energy source of modern society - oil - unleashed and fuelled countless controversies in environmental protection related debates. The conceptualization of oil companies' reaction to environmental issues brought o number of milestones, but was based on the analysis of world leaders and envisaged more the drivers of environmental decisions of oil companies. The paper aims to describe how oil companies reacted to environmental issues. The analysis showed that the global policy agenda is adopted with priority for both, environmental problems in general and climate change.