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In Russia, petroleum and petrochemical sectors are closely related: most leading hydrocarbon exploration companies own installations producing organic substances and polymers for the domestic and international markets. Recent transition of Russian economy to Best Available Techniques (BAT) in 2021 is followed by the regulation of greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. Moreover, the sector experiences pressure due to the necessity to boost recycling of plastics and, in the near future, to reduce their production. Accord...

The purpose of the analysis is to uncover and understand prospects and opportunities for maintaining economic stability while continuing the strategy of diversification of economic structures in the countries - members of The Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC), two of which: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the leading economies of the Arab world. The deterioration of the economic situation in the GCC countries could inevitably lead to destabilization in the complexly developing...

The Brown Coal Research Institute j. s. c. is realising the long term research and survey in the field of restoration problems and it is realising the long term research of climate changes in the Czech Republic including impacts to mining operations during research programme of the European Union TEXMIN solving too. The input of expected temperature increasing and precipitation decreasing is favourable for mining operation from point of view of overburden and mining cuts stability, safety of mining and mining cost...

Prevention of major chemical accidents, covered in the European Union by SEVESO III Directive (2012/18/EU) belongs among important environmental laws and it demands, together with general safety management and emergency preparedness, also security aspects, i.e., protection against intentionally caused major accidents as terrorist attacks and/or sabotage. This demand has an increasing importance in the time of hybrid attacks and growing terrorist activities, where chemical energy present in technologies and industr...

This study aimed to reveal the dependence of the spatial distribution of heavy metals in soil on the morphography of the Lower Danube floodplain in the Ostrovska Lowland in Bulgaria. The field campaign was conducted in 2017, and the concentration of Zn, Ni, Pb and Cr were measured in the fine fraction (<0.063 mm) of 10 soil samples using X-ray fluorescence analysis. The average content of Cr in the topsoil (0-20 cm) was 127 mg/kg ranging between 98 – 171 mg/kg. It was followed by Zn – 81 mg/kg (60 – 128 mg/kg), Ni...

The development of industrialization worldwide also leads to pollution of ground waters, surface and drinking waters. In order to obtain high quality drinking water, the European Union proposes to develop appropriate methods for purifying water from priority pollutants and potentially hazardous substances. One appropriate method is adsorption, which is a relatively affordable and inexpensive technology for highly efficient water treatment. The aim of the present study is to investigate the adsorption capacity of c...

In this article, we analyze the variability of aboveground dry plant biomass and yield of aboveground phytomass in Trifolium pratense L. and Trifolium repens L. under different growing conditions. The studied species are valuable melliferous, fodder and medicinal plants, which accumulate ascorbic acid, carotenoids, higher fatty acids, glycosides, phenols, flavonoids and other substances. During the growing seasons 2018-2020, we studied 15 natural coenopopulations of T. pratense and T. repens, distributed in the so...

The Istria Basin, part of Western Black Sea (WBS) represents a major tectonic unit of the Romanian Black Sea shelf, with prolific hydrocarbon bearing structures. A significant amount of exploration and development wells were drilled on this basin’s northern edge. Core and cuttings data from 12 boreholes provide important details on this basin and the WBS stratigraphy, especially for the two of the main hydrocarbons bearing deposits Upper Cretaceous and, respectively, Eocene, on which we have achieved an age interp...

The separate layer of rhizoid limestone from Urzhumian red succession of Tetyushi Volga region was studied to clarify its depositional features. Field description, optical microscopy, bulk geochemistry, stable isotopes of carbon and oxygen analysis, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used. The limestone under study has a thickness of about 1 m, is penetrated by a network of thin root channels (rhizoid limestone), the upper part of the rhizoid limestone is overlain by thin-laminated leafy limestone (3-5 cm) (l...

The depletion of oil fields in traditional production regions leads to the need to involve hard-to-recover reserves in the development. This, in turn, is associated with a significant increase in the cost of production. Well construction costs are subdivided into costs that depend on the time of drilling and costs that depend on the amount drilled. The article indicates that one of the main methods of reducing the cost of drilling is to increase the efficiency of productive time and reduce non-productive time in t...

The way people perceive risks determines their reactions to and engagement in public campaigns, new development projects or clean-up and remediation initiatives. Since local communities represent important stakeholders in the sustainable development of a region, their beliefs and social representations of risk are important indicators that need a careful analysis. Mining communities are of particular interest to social and environmental scientists given the long-term pollution resulting from such activities and th...

Taking into account the sedimentation features since the last 5 decades, considerable anthropic modifications on the Danube channel are present, as the debris composition varies concerning the proportion of terrigenous minerals, lithoclasts, bioclasts and organic matter. Since the 7th decade of the last century, marked by the construction of most hydrological power plants on the Danube, Olt, Jiu, Cerna and other major rivers, a significant change of the sedimentary volume brought downstream by the Danube is assume...

The earthquakes are among the most common natural events in Bulgaria. Earthquakes represent a societal challenge as well as globally necessitating practical and operational solution for mitigating risk and reducing losses. This is achievable though earthquake risk assessment. The assessment of seismic risk is based on procedures for integration of seismic hazard and seismic vulnerability of the bearing structures of the building stock. The building stock is divided into three main groups, taking into account the s...

In oil and gas exploration we need to consider all the geological components and how they come together to have source rock character, trap formation geometry, or reservoir quality. To understand these mechanisms we have to analyze the geological evolution dictated by tectonic uplift, landscape dynamics and drainage network evolution. Paleogeography together with reconstructions of climate and sea level changes allows us to predict source and reservoir facies, which means a great advantage for exploration. The Wes...

An earthquake catalogue covering the seismicity on the territory of Bulgaria and adjacent lands for the period 2000-2020 is presented in the current study. In this catalogue are included events with magnitude equal to or larger than Mw ? 2.5. As a country, Bulgaria belongs to the Alpo-Hymalian seismic belt, it is also not absent of strong earthquakes. Bulgaria is an earthquake prone country taking in account that on its territory are recorded some of the strongest earthquakes from the beginning of the last century...

Protecting the environment is a top priority today. The aim of the paper is to present the possible environmental risks arising from the rail transport of hazardous substances. During transport, new risks of leakage of hazardous substances and environmental contamination from railway tanks arise during their decommissioning at railway stations. These risks can be a significant source of environmental contaminants and there is no methodology to prevent possible impacts. The current situation in Europe has seen some...

The article assesses the size of the shadow economy of the Russian oil and gas industry. The article addresses factors in the shadow economy emergence and development in the oil and gas sector. The article justifies methods fighting the phenomenon. The article proposes a system of measures reducing the size of the shadow economy in the oil and gas sector and its impact on the economy of Russia. It has been proven that amid the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and political and economic sanction pressure of E...

Humanity vision about steadily increasing its quality of life has had as a consequence the maintained search for available odds in order to design various energy supply systems based on different energy resources. The innovative thinking way of human beings has always been also driving the field of shaping more efficient energy supply systems with less unwanted environmental impacts. Conventional energy supply systems, especially based on fossil fuels, have been since long applied, their impacts being especially p...

Unfortunately, soil is a non-renewable resource that fulfills several vital functions such as food/biomass production, storage, filtration and transformation of mineral or biological substances, source of biodiversity and habitats, etc. Due to the development of industrial activities outside the localities, in many areas the soil is degraded. Among these degradation processes can be mentioned degradation of organic matter, contamination, soli salting, and erosion. This paper is dedicated to the presentation of the...

Decision-making theory has been developing significantly for the last 50 years. It finds its various applications in the very different fields of human activities: engineering, social and life science, and sure economics. The task of substantiating decisions under conditions of uncertainty of all types, except for a priori is reduced to narrowing the initial set of alternatives based on the information available to the decision maker. The quality of recommendations for decision-making under conditions of stochasti...

In this paper, a class of multi-extremal stochastic programming problems is considered. Direct and dual problems are also included in this problem, respectively, in this paper the question of the existence of solutions to such problems is studied, the necessary theorems and proofs are given. Decision making under uncertainty is based on the fact that the probabilities of various scenarios are unknown. Decision-making under risk conditions is based on the fact that each situation of the development of events can be...

The Vrancea zone, located in Romania, at the sharp bend of the Southeastern Carpathians, is a well-defined seismic region in a continental convergence area with unique properties and generating the most destructive subcrustal earthquakes in Europe. The seismicity is concentrated in a confined, high-velocity, focal volume at 60–200 km depth range. The increasing number and quality of waveforms digitally recorded in the last time by the National Institute for Earth Physics (NIEP) provide the opportunity to better co...

The determination of residual oil reserves is a complex task that involves high qualified specialists and resource-intensive calculations. Classical oil reservoir simulation methods cannot provide proper level of reliability due to increasing of complexity caused by oil reservoir depleting. Stagnant oil zones arising from heterogeneity of shear modulus of medium cannot be determinate by oil reservoir simulation due to use of effective values of porosity and absolute and phase permeability. The problem of determina...

Excess natural and technogenic chemical exposure have a negative impacts on the regulatory systems of the body. This leads to a decrease in its resistance and adaptabilities. The child`s body is the most vulnerable to the impact of adverse environmental factors owing to the age characteristics. Strontium belongs to the group of metals that can form an improper quality of drinking water, and is also included in the list of the main indicators of water quality according to the requirements of sanitary standards of t...

The efficient use and recycling of industrial water is a major challenge to the sustainability of the planet. Blast furnace slag is a by-product of metallurgical operations during the production of cast iron. The granulated slag is obtained by cooling in water. In this research we studied the cooling water of granulated slag generated from the process of making cast iron through the blast furnace route. The elemental analysis of granulated slag and of granulated slag stored in water was determined by X-Ray Fluores...

Waste steel slag is a major source of environmental pollution within the metallurgical industries. Metallurgical slags like blast furnace slag, ferroalloy slag, converter slag and copper slag are produced as by-products in metallurgical processes. During the production of steel, one ton of slag waste is generated per every three tons of stainless steel produced. In order to reuse waste steel slag, discharged at high temperature range (1250-1650 °C) and cooled in water, which is named as granulated slag, three diff...

Oil is produced in the form of an oil emulsion due to the high depletion of deposits and significant water cut in wells. The formation of emulsions can lead to a number of complications in the operation of various field equipment, and sometimes even to emergency shutdowns or failures. Therefore, the study of the properties of demulsifiers and their effectiveness is an important task. The work investigates the surface-active properties of seven industrial demulsifiers produced in Russia, such as: interfacial and su...

Environmental problems of mining industry are largely related to the need to store mining and processing waste, occupying large areas and being a source of the natural environment pollution. The Mining Institute KSC RAS has substantiated the methodology and developed the technology for the ecological restoration of lands disturbed during development of georesources in the framework of the rock – biota system evolution by creating a sown cereal phytocenosis without the application of a topsoil layer, which provides...

Old closed uranium mines can be a significant source of environmental pollution and hazards to human health. The problem could become more severe in time due to erosion if the restoration measures are not properly maintained. There are many uranium mines in Bulgaria that, even closed in the 1990s, could be a pollution source for surface and groundwater in their region. Through hydraulic connections, they can contaminate the rivers passing nearby. The aim of the present work was to check the hypothesis of a possibl...

Carbon foam is advanced porous material with multiple high-technology applications, due to its structure, light weight, high thermal stability, high thermal and electrical conductivity. Potential applications of carbon foam are construction of ship and aerospace modules, rocket nozzles, radar adsorbing systems; fuel cells, battery electrodes, nuclear shields, rods for nuclear reactors; prosthetics, etc. In this work a new method for preparation of carbon foam is demonstated, using precursors mixtures of organic su...

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) of the Russian steel industry perform an important function of innovative development. These enterprises produce unique products in small batches for domestic engineering and implement import substitution projects (e.g., piece products of cast-iron casting for enterprises producing agricultural machinery). At the same time foundry production makes one of the most unfavorable influence on ecology and occupational health. Waste of foundry production and emissions into the at...

Operations carried out within the oil and gas industry involve the risk of explosions which might lead to work accidents with significant consequences for personnel and installations. The release of a hydrocarbon gas due to various reasons such as improper selected equipment or its’ malfunction, staff negligence, lack of maintenance a.s.o. in mixture with air generates a potentially explosive atmosphere if the mixture’s concentration ranges between certain limits, the so-called Lower Explosive Limit (LEL) and Uppe...

Activity of many industrial enterprises is accompanied with considerable amount of liquid technogenic waste products containing toxic heavy and non-ferrous metal ions as well as petroleum products, oils, and surfactants that are discharged to surface water together with waste water and used technical solutions. Therefore, efficient wastewater treatment is one of the main directions to decrease the industrial negative impact on the environment. The main sour?es of wastewater pollution with heavy and non-ferrous met...

The problem of the antibiotic resistance of bacteria inhabiting the guts of poultry and livestock and furthermore manures and fertilizers prepared from manures is recognized as one of the most serious problems in agriculture. Composting is described as an effective way to reduce the abundance of antibiotic-resistant genes in the final product, however such a positive effect is not always guaranteed. The addition of highly porous components like biochar into composting mixtures is applied nowadays in order to impro...

Using an integrated approach to evaluate the quality of the reservoir and the potential of production is getting more and more important in petroleum geology. This integrated approach was used to analyse the quality of an old Miocene reservoir in the Moesian Platform, Romania. While this paper goes through all the main components of an integrated study (seismic, petrophysics, reservoir engineering), the main focus was on well data. This research focused on modelling the structure using mainly well data. The reserv...

Due to the ever-growing importance of resource conservation and sustainable lifestyle, people are searching for new, alternative solutions that will enable a more sustainable use of resources. Because energy production is one of the most pollution-intensive industries, a major factor is renewable energy, which reduces the amount of industry pollution and facilitates sustainable use of resources. One of the sustainable energy resources are Salix and the wood chips produced from them, which are used in energy produc...

This article describes gas hydrates formation, with methane and carbon dioxide as guest compounds, in a small-scale experimental apparatus, appositely designed to reproduce marine offshore reservoirs. The sediment consisted of pure quartz porous sand impregnated with FeSi3 particles, which are produced via gas-atomization and are usually destined to applications in additive manufacturing. Experimental results were compared with the theoretical equilibrium conditions for both types of hydrates. It was established t...

The hydrogenation of carbon dioxide (CO2) to methanol in presence of nanocatalysts has been reported as the one of the most economical and effective ways to reduce CO2 emissions. Over the past several decades, numerous efforts have been made to develop effective catalysts for CO2 hydrogenation to methanol. Among these, the CuO and ZnO based catalysts were highly active for methanol synthesis. Many studies have shown that SBA-15 (Santa Barbara Amorphous or mesoporous silica has good application prospects as a catal...

Training and development are a learning process that offers new and existing employees to acquire technical knowledge and skills and behavioral development attitudes so that their work is as effective as possible. Given the importance of staff training, this research measures the effect of training on the performance of employees of commercial banks in Kosovo, an important factor given that the growth and development of any organization is linked to the development of human resources. Quantitative methods used to ...

The purpose of the research is to analyze the development of techniques and the formation of ESG -Rating and investment attractiveness of natural resources companies. The basis of the author's technique laid calculation complex rated on the basis of financial and non-financial indicatives: air pollution; water usage; solid waste emission; environmental costs; investment activity. The developed method scientific novelty is in the usage of a systematic approach to the development of the ESG - Rating and due to the a...

The economic development of the Arctic region is a priority for the Russian Federation in the coming years, and this creates new challenges for Russian science in developing technologies and devices that can reliably and effectively function in the harsh conditions of the deeply negative temperatures of the northern territories. The paper examines the basic principles of low-temperature operation of molecular-electronic devices for recording motion parameters and wave fields, namely, the step-by-step operation of ...

The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has negatively affected all sectors of the economy around the world. At the same time, tourism was one of the most affected business sectors. The history of tourism shows that the industry is exposed to crisis phenomena earlier than any other sphere of economic activity, but it adapts to new conditions much faster and more flexibly. The crisis of 2020-2021 is usually compared with other crises that the tourism industry experienced in the 2000s in Russia. In this paper the characte...

A Geopark is a demarcated area with particularly interesting geologic heritage. Since the physical landscape is intimately related to both cultural and ecological characteristics, knowledge about geological sites can be essential for management of the resources in these settings. In this context, we suggest the term “Landscape Geopark” in order to stress the regional system perspective. Therefore, various stakeholders need to be included in Geopark planning, including researchers, tourists, seasonal and permanent ...

Due to the general development of society, advanced technologies, constantly growing information and globalization, the complexity and dynamics of organizations are also increasing. In times of economic instability, organizations are clearly experiencing a chaotic period in which they try to understand what is going on, try to adapt, learn new technologies, improve, and transform communication channels and train people to share information. Such changes usually also affect the operation of the organization, often ...

Usage of new complex applications and systems will force most companies to rethink time and human resources, motivate them to automate processes where human intervention can be done or is needed at a minimum. However, safety in the technical world is a serious concern, companies that make any kind of decision cannot skip this aspect. The pace at which new technologies and methods are being adapted is currently based on very rapid external pressures. The current situation in the world is undoubtedly a huge challeng...

The growing importance of a cultivated environment with a high population density was an incentive for the authors to find and compile a new, more sensitive sophisticated approach to the valuation of immovable cultural monument. Primarily, objects with significant historical and architectural value were examined, for which there was a high possibility of finding and defining suitable criteria with an impact on the valuation of real estate. The research focused on immovable cultural monuments located in the statuto...

The article presents the data obtained by the authors during the expedition research in the largest bay of the Azov Sea - the Taganrog Bay. Its characteristic feature is shallowness, flowing due to water exchange with the Don, small rivers, and the development of surge phenomena. The ecosystem of the bay has been experiencing strong anthropogenic pressure for several decades. The authors analyzed the behavior and distribution of mercury dissolved and suspended forms in the surface and bottom layers of water, depen...

The work is devoted to the assessment of the natural protection of groundwater in the Ternopil oblast (Ukraine). The evaluation is based on the parametric method of V. M. Holdberh. The characteristics of the geological structure of the aeration zone and aquifers are given. The areas of the greatest influence of karst on the protection of aquifers are determined. The stratigraphic confinedness of water intakes and large deposits of groundwater is described for further analysis of their protection. Since more than 5...

Vulnerability, land use and sustainability are some of the main elements of major concern in the last decades that can be translated in practice through efficient development and planning. The role land use plays is recognized worldwide due to the rapid and continuous urban growth and development, which determine the occurrence of new powerful forces leading to social, demographical, environmental, technological and governmental changes. The large number of disasters in recent years demonstrated that the most effe...

Europe currently faces a range of serious ecological problems, such as collapse of avifauna, decline of pollinator biodiversity and widespread soil erosion. Multiple factors affect ecological processes at landscape and regional scales. Most recent European Union (EU) agenda intends to address biodiversity decline and climate change by implementation of green infrastructure, sustainable agriculture and forestry, as well a range of other interventions. However, European Commission generally moves towards decentraliz...