Indicators of sustainable business in petrochemical Industries

Words and phrases like green, sustainable, renewable, and environmentally conscious may have clear meanings in certain contexts, but in others, their meanings and implications are complex. Companies in the oil industry have been including this type of language more frequently in their vision statements, descriptions of their operations, and marketing materials. Does this use of ¿green¿ buzzwords mean the companies are becoming more sustainable? It seems like a paradox to try to describe a company that relies on the extraction of nonrenewable resources as green. Although oil companies have become interested in newer alternative sources of energy, oil and natural gas remain the foundation of most large, international oil companies. The finite availability of crude oil has long been recognized (although exact estimates of how finite these reserves are vary greatly), but the growing focus on sustainability and greenness in the oil industry is a fairly recent trend. As we will see, it is not always clear what ¿sustainable¿ and ¿green¿ mean for the business of an oil company.