Recently, in the 7th FCCC (Framework Convention of Climate Change) Conference, the participating 165 governments ratified the Kyoto Protocol in an effort to prevent the global greenhouse effect. Korea is not yet legally bound by the protocol, but, is expected to ratify by next September. For this purpose, the Korean government has organized a FCCC committee to take charge of developing and implementing a comprehensive plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions in Korea. Furthermore, the government is taking serious measures to transform the national energy industry policy and environmental regulations in accordance with the Kyoto protocol.
Until now, the scope of environmental management and policy in the oil industry has been mainly limited to oil refineries, resulting in lack of attention to the rest of value chain in the oil industry. This is partly the industrial practices have focused on the assumption that most environmental disruption due to the oil industry came from the manufacturing process of the oil refinery.
However, the 21st century calls for businesses to perform environmental management throughout the entire process of their operations, demanding an overall integrated environmental management strategy across the entire supply chain. The new demand is not limited to the oil industry. Thesis, however, focuses on green supply chain in oil industry for we believe that it is the industry, where the new framework could bring out most significant practical implications. Recently greening supply chain has become one of most popular research topics in environmental management area. But it is our understanding that there is no serious research result in the area of greening the oil supply chain. The main research questions to be addressed in this paper are as follows:
● The current statue of environmental management in the supply chain of the oil industry and their limitations.
● Developing Green Supply Chain Management framework for oil industry and its application to Korean Oil industry, mainly for improving the EM practices in gas stations.
● Identifying the research and practical implications of the research results.
We can conclude that in evaluating the statue of the oil industry, viewing the environmental problems along the oil exploration, manufacturing, oil refinery, transporting, and consuming process in a comprehensive framework is necessary. In other words, environmental disruptions occur throughout the whole value chain, justifying the need of an overall integrated environmental strategy in the oil industry. We suggest that in order to reduce the severe environmental risks in gas station, the Korean ministry of environment and leading refiners need to take action by raising public awareness of the problem, which will ultimately lead related business entities to form a strategic alliance with the government, ensuing volunteered efforts in environmental management of gas stations.
