Towards Sustainability in the Oil and Gas Sector: Benchmarking of Environmental, Health, and Safety Efforts

The environmental, social and climate change issues that face the world today have all industries considering how they will address sustainability in the future. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the maturity of environmental, health and safety (EHS) efforts and progress toward sustainability in the oil and gas sector. Ten major oil companies have been analyzed based on public information including their published annual reports. Companies refer to voluntary initiatives when reporting their performance yet the assessment suggests that the sector overall continues to make progress and is maturing in its sustainability efforts. Many management system gaps were found that leave companies within this sector far from sustainable production and from being leaders in EHS Management. Most companies are still using lagging metrics and this is reflected in the activities implemented by companies. The sector’s EHS management status is found to be in the high middle/medium level of maturity. This means that the sector has made progress from simply embracing sustainability towards a commitment to addressing sustainability issues, but still has progress to make