Environmental Challenges of the Croatian Petroleum Industry

For the last few decades the petroleum companies base their development strategies on the concept of sustainable development taking into consideration all three dimensions of the sustainable development concept, namely the economic, the social and the environmental aspect. All the petroleum industry activities pose threat and have a significant impact to the environment. With the rise of environmental consciousness during the middle of the last century, environmental protection has been embedded into the petroleum industry activities but in the last few decades with rise of environmental standards it has become quite challenging for some petroleum companies to rise up to all the expectations. Petroleum industry in Croatia is based mainly around the activities of former national, today public limited, company INA. Three major environmental challenges facing petroleum industry in Croatia are greenhouse gas emissions from sour natural gas processing plant, corrosion pipeline damage and leakage and gas production platforms decommissioning in the northern Adriatic Sea. All the mentioned challenges will be analysed in the paper.