Establishment of Effective Environmental Criteria for Oil Products Farm Site Selection, The First Guideline

Abstract. The main objective of this research program is to establish a guideline for oil products farms site selection. Site selection process should follow criteria to find the best fitted place for the industry based on "maximum benefit" principle along with economical, social, and environmental considerations. On this basis, a long list of criteria was gathered from the literature. Then, it was changed to short list criteria through consulting a group of experts. The short listed criteria were evaluated and weighted through an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). As results show, natural disasters with weight of 11.07 is the most important criterion in site selection among 22 ones. The next five most important criteria are (i) oil tanks farm location with respect to surface water resources, (ii) physico-chemical soil characteristics, (iii) groundwater resources, (iv) groundwater table depth, and (v) groundwater quantity