Holistic Environmental Assessment of Oil and Gas Field Development

Many organisations, such as the British Medical Association, European Oilfield Speciality Chemicals Association, the Royal Ministry of Petroleum and Energy (Norway) and Shell Expro, now recognise that a holistic approach is essential to assess total environmental risk. This paper presents a study that has developed a new life-of-field, goal orientated process of analysis called Holistic Environmental Assessment (HEA). HEA assesses the total environmental risk associated with a proposed oil and gas field development. It prioritises environmental risks and identifies cost effective strategies to reduce them. For the first time the process was applied to a real 'case study' field development programme, X Field in UKCS Block 22/12, to test its effectiveness. The application identified that HEA is a useful tool to help design eco-efficient and cost-effective oil and gas field developments. Furthermore, it was discovered that much of the information required by HEA could be obtained in a quick and user-friendly format. The authors propose that HEA would be effective as a software tool to analyse different environmental risk management systems. This would facilitate the identification of a system that steers an operator towards the triple bottom line of Sustainable Development. A guidance document detailing the HEA method and its application is available from the authors.