Barriers to the Adoption of Industry 5.0 in the Downstream Oil and Gas Value Chain: A Fuzzy ISM-MICMAC Analysis

Background: The downstream oil and gas processing industry faces substantial environmental, regulatory, safety, and operational risks. Advanced technologies can reduce these risks and improve productivity, compliance, sustainability, and worker safety. However, despite adopting AI, analytics, machine learning, and IoT, Indian firms continue to lag behind their global counterparts, and Industry 5.0 adoption in this sector remains underexplored. Methods: This study examines Industry 5.0 adoption barriers using data from an Indian public-sector oil and gas organisation. Guided by the Resource-Based View and supply chain integration perspective, it applies a mixed-methods design combining a literature review, focus group discussion, Delphi analysis, and Fuzzy ISM–MICMAC. Forty-two barriers were identified and reduced to eight critical barriers. Results: Low technological maturity and lack of value-chain integration emerged as the principal driving barriers, influencing implementation failure, organisational technological readiness, and management commitment, which subsequently affect data quality. Geopolitics emerged as an autonomous barrier with both positive and adverse effects. Conclusions: This study develops a sector-specific framework explaining the hierarchical relationships among technological, organisational, sociotechnical, and value-chain barriers. It extends Industry 5.0 research in hazardous, human–technology-dependent operations and offers practical guidance for a human-centric, sustainable, and resilient transformation.