Nunzia Capobianco

The decommissioning of offshore platforms has been increasingly discussed due to its economic, social, and environmental impacts. The high complexity of this multilevel context pushes for the adoption of a service ecosystem view to explore the value propositions and actors' relations involved in resource exchanges. This study follows a mixed‐method approach based on semistructured interviews conducted with oil and gas stakeholders and content analysis of the secondary data collected. The results highlight the ecosystem elements and identify the main drivers for sustainable growth in the process of the reconversion of oil and gas assets. A “meta” level is theorized to investigate how the actors' purposes can be harmonized with an ecosystem's goal to encourage the diffusion of a sustainable‐oriented culture in the context of offshore decommissioning. In this sense, the study provides several insights for researchers and professionals in both the local and national governance field and the oil and gas industry.

In recent times, decommissioning of offshore platforms has become an even more discussed topic, for its relevant environmental, social, and economic repercussions. In particular, by carrying out economic considerations, all the divestiture possibilities applicable to an offshore platform and the relative sustainable business models (SBMs) will be analyzed in a wide framework of the circular economy and sustainable principles. In this scenario, sustainable decommissioning (SD) of offshore platforms process refers to multidimensional and interdisciplinary challenges, which requires a deep understanding of technical, legal, economic, financial, social, and environmental variables. The decommissioning of these structures is an issue that has gained a great deal of international attention and will require in the next years an open dialogue and exchange between institutions, oil and gas companies, enterprises, and the environment.

Over the years, value co-creation practices have become increasingly more important by supporting collaborative interactions and the achievement of sustainable and mutual competitive advantage between the ecosystem’ actors. In this direction, the oil and gas industry is proposing a sustainable re-use of offshore platforms based on value co-creation and resources exchange between the actors involved. According to this consideration, this work aims at re-reading the decommissioning of offshore platforms in the light of value co-creation practices, trying to capture the factors that governments and companies can leverage to pursue a sustainable development of local communities. To reach this goal, this work follows an exploratory approach by using, in particular, the case study. Specifically, one of the most notably projects in the Italian context have been chosen, the Paguro platform, in order to provide empirical insights into the nature of these value co-creation processes. Five value co-creation practices have been identified which highlight the importance of synergistic efforts of institutions, companies and technology-based platforms for improving the ability to co-create and capture value in the process of decommissioning. This exploratory work establishes a foundation for future research, and offers theoretical and managerial guidance in this increasingly important area.

The management of offshore platforms at the end of their production phase is a complex issue for technological, socioeconomic, ecological and safety reasons. The decommissioning or reconversion of offshore platforms in the context of a circular economy (CE) will lead to new knowledge acquisition, changing values and changing behaviours towards sustainability consistent with the ‘new’ business objectives. Multiuse platforms at sea (MUPSs) represent an interesting solution for development of marine infrastructures, including areas in which to start and develop various creative economic activities that are in harmony with the needs of environmental protection including renewable energy, sea shellfish farming, decarbonisation plants, tourism, and recreation. Particularly, the research activity focused on a deep literature review of offshore platform decommissioning and sustainable business model (SBM) in a CE context. This allowed us to access the sustainable business model canvas (SBMC), a conceptual tool that represents a holistic view of the different managerial multiuse options and their social and environmental impacts. Besides, to test the SBMC, we adopt an empirical analysis by semi‐structured questionnaires given to a sample of stakeholders in the decommissioning industry. The methodology was enriched by interviews with key informants to better investigate the business ecosystem and the feasibility of decommissioning applied to the case of an Italian offshore platform located in the Adriatic Sea. This article aims to contribute to supporting SBMs development following a holistic approach in relationship with all stakeholders and propose a multi‐criteria decision‐making analysis for evaluating and comparing alternative decommissioning options.

The growing complexity of environmental challenges has progressively led to the emergence of Sustainable Business Models (SBMs) able to embed economic, environmental, and social flows in a unified value network. All sectors are demanding innovative and sustainable solutions, including the oil and gas industry, which aims to address the issues about the decommissioning of offshore platforms. However, although the relevant literature highlighted the potentialities related to a multi-reuse of these structures, the effect of Sustainable Decommissioning (SD) on macro-environmental factors is still an open question. Based on these considerations, this study follows a Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental (PESTLE) analysis according to semi-structured interviews conducted with oil and gas key informants and stakeholders in the Italian context. The results of the analysis can provide a novel thinking for addressing the challenges related to a sustainable decommissioning of offshore platforms and shed light on the importance of synergistic efforts by local entrepreneurship and institutional arrangements to combine economic and environmental sustainability with social needs. This paper can contribute to the emerging field of sustainable business models related to the decommissioning of offshore platforms and suggests avenues for future research.