Five in Five - StrategicFit Q&A

Our Five in Five Q&A series provides quickfire, engaging insights on topics that matter to our audience.

Each release will showcase different perspectives, give detailed focus on our partnerships and raise useful points for discussion.

This edition features our interview with Strategic Fit, where we tackled some important questions.

Q1. How do you help clients make confident investment choices when facing policy uncertainty, volatile markets, and competing transition pathways?

1. The number of permutations of choices and outcomes can be overwhelming. It’s a very “bushy” decision tree. There are so many “what-ifs” and in the last year or two this has only seemed to escalate. A decision-lens helps our clients make this tangle manageable. Which outcomes would actually change our decisions? If it’s not decision-relevant then don’t get caught up in endless discussions about it.

   
   

2. A critical step is to draw the right boundary around the decisions at hand. If this boundary is too broad, you’ll never make the choice. Are we deciding on an end of field life strategy or solving the energy trilemma? On the other hand, If the frame is too narrow there’s a risk of regret by taking decisions in isolation. This framing step is more of an art than a science, but it deserves deep discussion. Often our clients individually carry unspoken assumptions about what the boundary around a problem is. Getting these out on the table reduces the risk of re-work later when someone realises there’s a missing piece or it becomes apparent that the team has bitten off more than it can chew.

   
   

3. Another enabler is to create a small but diverse set of alternative strategies to evaluate. Five or six is usually the right number. Each should be potentially compelling, coherent and do-able. They should be different enough from each other that by examining them you learn about the full range of directions you could take. Later you can build hybrids that combine the best parts of each. But if you set out to compare dozens of options it quickly becomes very hard to manage the analysis and debate.

Q2. Decommissioning is emerging as a major emissions hotspot. How should operators integrate emissions considerations into decom planning from the outset?

1. Operators should take a joined-up approach to end of field life planning as early as possible. Decisions made in isolation often result in regrets.

   
   

2. End-of-life decision-making in upstream oil and gas is incredibly complex. As operators approach cessation of production, they’re usually balancing a diverse mix of activities: early plug and abandonment to brownfield infrastructure simplification, new wells, workovers and even exploration. All of these have emissions implications.

   
   

3. For example, prioritising early plug and abandonment to minimise the time between CoP and reaching hydrocarbon-free status can shorten the need for people offshore, which in turn cuts logistics-related emissions. But this can be at the expense of other value-creating activities like drilling new development wells or doing work-overs.

   
   

4. Best-in-class operators look across the whole late-life activity set, understand the consequences of different sequences and constraints, and make the trade-offs explicit. Integrating emissions into the same decision framework as cost, risk, value and schedule helps operators identify low-regret opportunities early and avoid locking in unnecessary emissions later. 

Q3. How does integrating sustainability and emissions insights strengthen the commercial and strategic recommendations you provide?

I can’t think of a single strategy project we’ve worked on in the last three decades where sustainability in general, and emissions in particular, weren’t part of the mix. The difference is that early in that period we often got the impression that they were a box to tick. Now they’re fundamental. But our clients don’t always have the internal expertise, for example, to quantify and compare the emissions implications of different alternatives. So, it’s a blind spot that matters more and more. As we mentioned earlier, information is important to the extent that it’s decision-relevant. Senior leaders, regulators, local stakeholders and shareholders are seriously insisting on environmentally responsible decisions. So, the decision relevance of sustainability and emissions is increasing to be on par with NPV, costs, risk and resource implications.

Q4. Where do you see the strongest complementarity for clients when engaging with StrategicFit and sustain:able jointly?

StrategicFit brings strategy development expertise grounded in decision science while sustain:able brings ESG vertical expertise. ESG metrics have emerged as key decision criteria at the same level as financial returns and volume growth in the energy sector. Sustain:able can enhance all dimensions of decision quality by explicitly considering the ESG impact of company’s actions.

Q5. What strategic or market risks do you feel are most underestimated by boards heading into 2026?

1. The biggest risk we see is boards failing to ensure that their organization has realistic ESG goals to achieve in both short- and long-term.

   
   

2. With 5 years removed from the frenzy of net zero goal setting activities, we see companies resetting their near-term strategies and revising their long-term ESG goals. Is the company on track to achieve the long-term ESG targets? Which part should they overhaul and what is the rationale? How should they balance conventional business objectives such as financial return and growth vs. ESG goals? What is the path to make profit from low carbon business?

   
   

3. Those organizations with clear value-based ESG strategies will attract better valuation than their peers.

Stay tuned for the next part of our Q&A series!