Eleventh International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

The coastal Niger Delta is being severely threatened by impacts of climate change exacerbated by floods, corresponding rise in ambient temperature, and Atlantic tidal intrusion, persistent heavy rainfall, and windstorms. These events have continued to disrupt the operations of critical crude oil and gas installations and calls for urgent ranking of the most sensitive system vulnerable to these threats. To adapt effectively, ranking crude oil and gas installations based on stakeholder perception of sensitivity is crucial. We applied analytic review of fifty-two journal articles to synthesise explicit sensitivity assessment indicators for evaluation of selected installations. MCDA tool was implemented in indicator-based pairwise evaluation and ranking of selected installation. We engaged carefully stratified practitioners and experts with a minimum of ten years field experience in the industry in structured focus groups and elite interviews for data collection. The result was analysed using Goepel (2015) multiple-input AHP software and indicates the global sensitivity ranks (eigenvector, EV) for each installation. The result shows the first three most sensitive installation in the following order; terminals (27.3%), flow stations (19.2%) and roads/bridges (15.6%). Ranking of other installations shows transformers/high voltage cable (14.0%) as the mid sensitive installation while the less sensitive installations to climate change are Pipelines (11.1), loading bays (9.3%) and wellheads (5.0%). We recommend that the oil and gas industry could leverage sensitivity analysis outcome from this study to plan effective and efficient adaptation mechanisms to protect most sensitive installations from climate change impact in the coastal Niger Delta.