Sustainability assessment of OPEC countries: Application of a multiple attribute decision making tool

Abstract Sustainable development (SD) can be considered as a bridge incorporating economic development and environmental protection. Sustainability in oil industry is a crucial environmental issue, from the extraction to the delivery levels. As a result of the rapidly increasing population and industrialization, there would not only be the energy demand but also an increase in oil production in next decades affecting SD. Unfortunately, some industries including oil production are directly related to the CO2 and other harmful emissions making it an important issue in terms of sustainability. Therefore, assessment of sustainability performance of OPEC countries is of vital importance affecting the global energy sectors hierarchies. Along this line, via using a multiple attribute decision making (MADM) approach namely Combined Compromise Solution (CoCoSo), the OPEC countries are analysed according to 41 SD indicators in 10 dimensions in this study. Twelve selected main members of OPEC are evaluated based on the official real data and the outputs are tested through sensitivity analyses compared to other extensively known robust MADM methods. Based on the findings, United Arab Emirates is the most sustainable OPEC country with 71.9% performance score as well as Qatar, Kuwait, and Iran are positioned next with 69.3%, 66.6, and 56.2% performance scores, respectively. High correlation (greater than 97%) of the method used in this study compared to other robust MADM methods (WASPAS, MABAC, CODAS, and VIKOR) demonstrated the effectiveness and usefulness of the proposed method.

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