Life cycle assessment in the petroleum industry: A systematic framework towards improved environmental performance

The increase in worldwide energy demand continues to highlight the dependency on the petroleum industry albeit recent advances and market penetration of renewable technologies. This dependency reflects the importance of minimizing environmental impacts associated with the petroleum industry, especially in terms of the wide variety of industrial residuals generated during the various phases of operations and production processes, including and not limited to produced and slop water, drill cuttings, fluids, as well as oily sludge. In this study, we present a critical analysis and synthesis of life cycle assessment (LCA) for waste-wastewater management from the petroleum industry operations. For this purpose, we examine the industry's waste-wastewater sources and types with current management approaches-techniques while focusing on the LCA role in this context. We identified the main literature gaps including a lack of studies about the reuse options of PW, lack of regionalized site-specific characterization factors (CF) for non-developed impact categories, and lack of sensitivity analysis integration. We conclude by proposing a systematic framework defining future work in LCA implementation targeting PW in particular as the largest wastewater stream from the sector.