Sustainable development requires decision making to incorporate multiple criteria, including environmental impacts based upon life cycle thinking. Within the oil industry, the application of life cycle approaches has tended to focus upon policy and corporate level, strategic decisions with concerns over the resource, and time demands precluding their application at the tactical/refinery level. Following a review of streamlined life cycle approaches, the authors have addressed these concerns by outlining a new approach that is tailored to suit decisions at the tactical level in oil refineries and is accessible to process engineers. Using a real problem at an oil refinery as a case study, this approach has been developed in greater depth and the application of life cycle thinking has been shown to aid the generation of alternatives and to provide the decision maker with valuable insights that can be considered alongside social and economic criteria. It is anticipated that this approach could facilitate the uptake of life cycle thinking at oil refineries, with potential applications at other large industrial facilities.