Page 23 - Environmental Control in Petroleum Engineering

12 Environmental Control in Petroleum Engineering

minimize or eliminate their environmental risks. Unfortunately, many
of those options are expensive and may not be economically possible.
One of the keys to producing oil in environmentally responsible
ways is to be aware of any potential hazards and to plan effective ways
to minimize those hazards before a particular project begins. The first
step in this process is education. Petroleum engineers, geologists, and
managers must understand the place their industry occupies in society.
All companies, including oil companies, exist by the grace and will
of the people in society. If society does not want an industry to exist,
that industry can be shut down, either through legislation, litigation,
or economic boycotts. Unfortunately, the social pressures imposed on
an industry are not necessarily based on accurate scientific information,
Many existing regulations are politically based and do little to protect
human health and the environment, yet they add considerable costs
to businesses that must comply.
The environmental movement that has arisen over the past few
decades has resulted in regulations that have had a profound effect
on the operations of the upstream petroleum industry. These regulations
have been imposed because the public no longer believes that the
industry can regulate itself and still protect the environment. Some of
this loss of confidence has been earned, but some is the result of
deliberate misinformation spread by environmental extremists and a
media willing to misrepresent the truth to sell copy.
Regardless of why the public lacks confidence in the ability of the
petroleum industry to operate in an environmentally responsible
manner, the industry must adapt and learn to live within the increas-
ingly tight environmental regulations in order to survive. The funda-
mental shift in attitude toward proactive environmental protection that has
begun must continue—the past ways of doing business are gone and will
not return. It is not enough just to comply with whatever the current
regulations might be; there must be a serious commitment toward protect-
ing the environment in all activities, regardless of the regulations.
The key to effective regulations that protect the environment is for
the regulations to be based on accurate scientific information. If an
industry has lost its credibility with the public regarding environmental
concerns due to its past behavior, then any accurate scientific informa-
tion about the environmental impact of its current operations will also
lack credibility. This results in regulations that are very costly to the
industry, but do little to protect the environment.