A review of climate change impacts to oil sector critical services and suggested recommendations for industry uptake

Abstract

Climate change already has far-reaching impacts on the oil industry, putting the operation, reliability, and growth of the sector at risk. Oil infrastructure has multi-decadal lifetime projections; thus, climate change and extreme weather events such as extreme temperatures, hurricanes, high winds, lightning strikes, storm surges, flooding, etc., pose an extra challenge to the oil supply chain, from upstream to downstream. In this paper, we review the climate change risk assessment frameworks, the impacts of climate change on oil infrastructure, and we identify gaps in the current knowledge, also suggesting future search directions on adapting the oil sector to climate change. The work overviews linkages between climate and oil industry design, operational, and service thresholds in a comprehensive hazard threshold matrix. Existing risk assessment methodologies that account for existing regulatory frameworks and interdependencies with other infrastructures are studied, leading to mitigation, adaptation, and sector resilience recommendations.