ENVIRONMENTAL RISK ASSESSMENT OF OIL AND GAS FACILITY IMPACTS ON AGRICULTURAL LAND AND CROP PRODUCTION

Abstract

This paper assesses the environmental risks posed by oil and gas facilities to adjacent agricultural land and crop production through a systematic probability-impact risk framework. Five principal contamination pathways — soil hydrocarbon contamination, irrigation water pollution, heavy metal uptake by crops, salinisation from drilling fluids, and atmospheric deposition — are characterised and prioritised. The scientific novelty lies in the quantification of crop yield losses attributable to each pathway using a dose-response modelling approach, integrating published experimental data with field measurements from oil-producing regions of Azerbaijan to calibrate exposure estimates to the local semi-arid context. Soil hydrocarbon contamination and irrigation water pollution are identified as critical risk pathways, with combined estimated crop yield reductions of 18–34 % in high-exposure buffer zones within 2 km of production facilities