The role of sustainable development planning in our industry

Sustainability, nontechnical risk, environmental and social performance, as well as corporate (social) responsibility are interrelated terms that refer to an important set of competencies viewed as increasingly strategic in value for the oil and gas industry. A plethora of standards, guidelines, and good and best practices have been created by various sectors with the oil and gas industry being one of the most active in evolving its own guidelines. Given the increasing prominence of sustainability in the oil and gas industry, SPE embarked on a path in 2010 when it created a Sustainability Task Force to explore SPE's role and strategy in addressing sustainability, explore SPE's role in encouraging a methodical approach to sustainability for our industry, and generate proposals for the SPE Board to direct resources to address identified needs and opportunities. The team came up with a program that would take advantage of SPE's capacity to convene, to share knowledge, to reach individuals across the entire breadth of the industry and in multiple audience categories and to promote best practices. The Sustainability Task Force had identified competency development as the optimal way for SPE to accelerate the integration of sustainability practices to the operations of our industry. A primary objective of this new training program would then be to promote much-needed conversations between the expert practitioners and the operations decision makers, as well as deepen competencies.