Greenhouse Gas Emissions Strategy for a Major Oil and Gas Company

The Challenge

As the global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) issue evolves, it is becoming increasingly important for companies to construct a set of comprehensive plans and strategies around abatement opportunities and the impact of potential legislation to their business plans. A chemical company sought out Decision Strategies to develop a strategy to help build and sustain a competitive advantage in response to potential regulation and other external GHG mitigation drivers. This strategy could well encompass technology development, investment, marketing, and organizational decisions. The strategy could also be leveraged to additional developing work in the Upstream and Downstream business units, and must be aligned with any corporate positions or policies.

Our Approach

We responded to the client’s need for creative approaches to develop a corporate GHG strategy using proven framing tools and facilitated scenario analysis via the following steps:

• Educated client management on the:
  • • Existing footprint of the client’s GHG emissions
    • Issues of evolving global governmental policies
    • Actions of the company’s competitors
• Defined the technology options for GHG abatement and how the options aligned with the existing business requirements.
• Determined the potential impacts of different GHG reduction commercial incentives.
• Evaluated the R&D options and investment opportunities for advancing the technology alternatives.
• Evaluated additional options to mitigate the impact of client’s GHG footprint.
• Provided client-specific insights to the corporation as they develop policy, advocacy, and communication plans in response to GHG legislation.

Results

Our team’s prior knowledge in the area of GHG emissions was valuable in providing a “cold-eyes review” of the client’s background package which was used to educate management on GHG issues.

We facilitated the team’s ability to explore the different options.  The framing session also helped the team build off of each other’s ideas and fostered a teambuilding environment.

The client recognized that value was delivered in the framing session and the qualitative review of the options, helping the team to think much more broadly about value opportunities rather than simply developing a strategy to minimize non-productive investments.

Since the conclusion of this study, the client has seen a net reduction of 6 million metric tons of CO2 emissions.