یکپارچگی بین مدیریت زیست محیطی و برنامه ریزی استراتژیک در بخش نفت و گاز

For activities that have a high possibility of causing environmental accidents, like in the oil and gas sector, it is reasonable to expect the environmental management to be an important variable within the company's strategic planning. However, this is not always true. In some cases, a change in the companies’ attitude, abandoning a reactive position and assuming a proactive one, only happens upon the occurrence of serious environmental accidents with strong repercussion in the media. For the company that was the object of study, these accidents gave rise to deep changes in its environmental management, culminating in investments of approximately US$ 2.6 billion in environment, health and security, from 2000 to 2004. This was the highest amount to date invested on these areas by an oil company. This case study seeks to discuss the integration between environmental management and strategic planning in the oil and gas sector over a period of 10 years (from 1995 to 2004) in order to make a contextual analysis of the period before and after the environmental accidents possible.

Since the end of the 1980s, the major world corporations have been paying more attention to the environmental issue, whether because of the strictness of regulations or because of the awareness and subsequent demand from society for more commitment to the environment. Besides these legal and social issues, financial specialists foresee that the environmental concerns from large organizations—which are interested in attracting new investors—are going to increase a lot and will be an important distinguishing factor, influencing investors’ choices as well as resulting in financial returns. It is interesting to observe that—even if only the financial returns in the December 1993–June 2004 period are considered—companies’ stocks included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Group Index (DJSGI) had an appreciation of 146% versus 108% of the Dow Jones general index ( Exame Guide, 2004). A way of trying to evaluate the importance of the environmental issue within these large organizations is to estimate the interaction level between the environmental management adopted by the company and its strategic planning. The analysis of this interaction becomes even more relevant when the occurrence of serious environmental accidents has a strong repercussion in the media. In 2000, the studied company was responsible for two serious environmental accidents, with a total oil spill of about 5.3 million liters. The accidents made the company change drastically both the strategic plans and, mainly, the environmental management. Traditionally the oil and gas sector is one of the most harmful activities to the environment. The World Bank, using the database of Industrial Pollution Projection System (IPPS), presents the petrochemical sector as highly risky polluting agent for several types of different pollutants ( Young, 2000/2001). We should also remark the high risks of oil and its derivatives spills mainly during pumping and transportation operations. The charter below shows the main polluting gases emissions from the petrochemical sector among others. According to Table 1, we can see the importance of the oil and gas sector in any discussion related to environment preservation. Besides this, in respective literature (Ghobadian et al., 1995; Azzone et al., 1997; Ahmed et al., 1998; Sharma, 2000; Banerjee, 2001; Faulkner et al., 2005), there are still some questions that can be explored such as the integration between strategic planning and environmental management.Contributing to this discussion, by presenting how environmental management has evolved in 10-year time, its relation and integration with strategic planning before and after serious environmental accidents, the possible effects on the financial performance during this period of the largest Brazilian company and one of the 14 large companies in this sector of the world constitute the relevance of this research. So, the aim of this study is to discuss the integration of the environmental management with Petrobras—Petróleo Brasileiro S/A strategic plans, as well as measure the changes that occurred after the environmental accidents in the 1995–2004 period.

According to obtained data and considering the environmental attitude from the company object of the case study, it is possible to conclude that over the analyzed 10-year period, from 1995 to 2004, environmental issue was not a priority. Thus, the company did not present an eminently proactive attitude during that period. Its attitude drastically changed only after the serious accidents occurred in 2000 when high investments were made in Health, Safety, Security and Environment (HSSE). In this direction, it is possible to split the analyzed period into two distinct phases: one before and the other after these accidents. Over the analyzed 10-year period (1995–2004), Petrobras’ environmental management started to have a proactive attitude, more integrated with strategic planning, only after the accidents that happened in 2000. Therein, it is possible to divide this period into two distinct phases: before and after these environmental accidents. Until the year 2000, no accident involving the company had been so widely broadcasted by the press like the one that occurred in 2000. The changes in the environmental attitude impacted from the strategic plans to the company's business areas, causing a strong increase in environmental investments. Regarding the strategic plans, it is possible to perceive more evidence of environmental issues, both in the company's vision (2000/2010 plan), and in its vision and mission (2005/2015 plan). It is a fact that these attitude changes had an immediate positive effect on the reduction of the level of reported spills, but it is also possible to verify an increase of leakages starting from 2002. Another important point that ratifies these changes was the creation of two committees related to environmental management: The Environment Committee (since 2001), directly linked to the Administration Council, and the HSSE Management Committee (since 2000), responsible for the integration of all the company areas around environmental issues. Since relevant or lasting economic and financial effects were not observed in the financial statements or in the company's share value, it is reasonable to conclude that the possible negative effects of the accidents on the institutional image were the main factors that forced the company to make immediate and radical changes in its environmental attitude. This fact can be observed in the increase of investments on environment, marketing and sponsoring in the 2 years that followed the accidents. Finally, it should be highlighted that, even considering the strong positive evolution of the company regarding its environmental management after the accidents in 2000, the 4-year term (2000–2004) may not be enough to conclude definitively if the measures taken by the company were conjectural—only with the intention of giving an immediate response to society—or structural—effectively focused on a permanent integration between the company's strategic planning and environmental management.