A LCA Approach to Assess Environmental Impacts of Petroleum Industry

The petroleum history during the twentieth century was full of events and was associated with the conflicts of the century. Petroleum is the most important subject in our contemporary world politically and economically. It has invaded and controlled the world due to its unique features. It gave a new life to human being. The pattern of life on earth has changed. Human depends on petroleum and its derivatives to live. This change brought many risks that threat man's health, environment, and life sources (water, air, soil) because of the excessive usage of power sourced (petroleum). Petroleum industry was dangerous in all its stages. Workers in an oil field get exposed to four types of risks (natural, chemical, equipment, psychology). So, thus, the study which was done in this book, tried with good efforts to answer the following questions: 1-what are the impacts and damages of petroleum industry? 2- how are environmental sides distributed? 3- the impacts and damages quantity? All these questions are answered in this book by using a useful and powerful software for life cycle assessment SimaPro7.