Investing in oil drilling projects is often fraught with a great number of risks, primarily, the ones that are related to the environmental issues (Agwu, Ilori, & Nwachukwu 2013). A recent discovery of oil deposits in Croatia has led to a train of dilemmas regarding the further exploration of the existing opportunities. Starting the drilling process and investing into the project might seem the most adequate step to make, yet the current problems related to the possible environmental hazard and the necessity to avoid the risks such as covering for the damage made to the areas in the vicinity caused by drilling offer a lot of food for thought and room for doubt.
The disposition of the oil deposits aggravates the situation. As a recent study of the subject matter shows, the close proximity of the alleged drilling sites to the Adriatic Sea makes the dilemma nearly unsolvable (Bernardini, David, Perkovic, & Tarchi 2014). Regardless of the possible environmental hazard, a range of scholars (Bernadini et al. 2014; Loncar, Leder, & Paladin 2012) point to the fact that the further exploration of the area is bound to lead to impressive outcomes.
The choice of a multitask program, which will allow addressing the environmental issues and at the same time reduce the possible losses to the minimum must be viewed as an option in the specified scenario. By focusing on investing in technology and qualified workforce, as well as enhancing precaution measures, investors will be able to avoid the key risks, as well as gain great
Seeing that the environmental threat regarding the possibility of an oil spill in the Adriatic Sea is the essential risk at present and that it outweighs the rest of the concerns, addressing it is the most sensible investment decision. Avoiding the chance of an oil spill by improving the quality of the tools used for the drilling process, particularly, purchasing the ones that have a higher precision rate, must be the primary objective for investments at present. An increase in the accuracy of the drilling process will allow for reducing the risk of an oil spill and, therefore, the loss of the investments made in the process, to a minimum. As far as the current investment options are concerned, the acquisition of the tools such as X Drilling Tools (Welcome to X Drilling Tools, 2015) should be viewed as a possibility, since they have the highest accuracy rates and, therefore, allow for preventing the risk of an oil spill in the area
The above-mentioned risk concerning the drop in the state economy and, therefore, the conflict with the Croatian entrepreneurs and government members, will also need to be addressed. Even if the investors put a strong emphasis on the security measures and reinforce the strategies against oil spills in the area, tourists may still feel insecure about the possibility of an environmental hazard. As a result, great drops in tourism rates will be expected in the country. Seeing that the Croatian economy thrives on tourism as one of its crucial industries (Omerzel & Jurdana 2015), losing tourists will mean a slow but certain demise of the state economy.
The risks in question may be addressed by incorporating traditional and modern media as the means of raising awareness regarding the safety of the methods used by oil drilling companies in Croatia. Thus, the tourism rates will be kept at a decent level, therefore, creating premises for a sustainable economy in the target area. The specified choice will also presuppose investing in a qualified labour force since the decisions made by inadvertent people lacking competence in the subject matter may lead to dire results and huge losses caused by oil spills.
One must admit, though, that the process of drilling for oil in Croatia is fraught with numerous risks, which may jeopardize the success of the campaign. Particularly, the fact that exploring the opportunities for oil drilling in Croatia presupposes facing significant obstacles posed by private and public entrepreneurships in the tourism sector. As a recent study shows, the rates of tourists’ visits to Croatia have dropped significantly since the discovery of oil in the specified country (Sustar 2012). The specified consequence can be viewed as rather expectable, as the tourists’ concerns about the possible environmental hazards in the target area are quite understandable and far from being groundless: “Cruisers burn so called Bunker or No. 6 Heavy Fuel Oil.
This is probably the dirtiest fuel available with confirmed serious environmental impacts such as acidification ad health-respiratory impacts such as asthma or increased risks of lung cancer” (Hrvoje 2011, p. 111). Therefore, arguments against the further promotion of oil drilling in the area are expected from the local entrepreneurs in the tourism and hospitality industry. Thus, the risks of the oil drilling project finally collapsing under the pressure of the stakeholders mentioned above are quite tangible (Wills, 2013).
Apart from the threats to the local businesses and the state economy, the environmental and technical risks related to the area in question deserve to be brought up. Particularly, one must bear in mind that the process of drilling in the Adriatic Sea may lead to oil spills and, therefore, pollution of the area in question. The course of actions taken after the alleged oil spill does not invite many opportunities for assessing immunotoxicity of the area, not to mention the damage to the environment and the endemics thereof: “Possible ecological impacts from the immunotoxicity may include impaired disease resistance and increased parasitism that could lead to slower population recoveries” (Barron 2012, p. 319).
Hence, the investors may lose a significant amount of money when compensating for the damage made to the species and their habitat in the designated area. Moreover, the very process of drilling may be put to a halt by the local environmental protection agencies, which will impede the chances of the investors to retrieve any interest from investing in the project.
Although the threats listed above are rather impressive and need to be taken into account when viewing investments into the Croatia oil drilling campaign as a possibility, one must admit that the positive outcomes of the investment are still far too significant to be overlooked. Therefore, the risks in question will have to be managed with the help of the latest technology and the usage of modern equipment.
While the adoption of the above-mentioned risk management strategies does not guarantee complete avoidance of the two major risks mentioned above, these approaches will still pave the way for the investors to explore their options in Croatia without suffering major financial damages. Therefore, it can be assumed that promoting the oil drilling project in Croatia can only be viewed as reasonable once the stakeholders are ready to invest in the purchase and a consistent update of high quality equipment, as well as competent workforce, who will adopt a responsible attitude to the process and facilitate safety in the workplace by adhering to the existing safety guidelines.
Building awareness regarding the safety of the oil drilling process carried out with the help of state-of-the-art equipment is a challenging task in the era of information technology. Once a certain threat is introduced to social networks and the people using it, a hype regarding the issue is created immediately and is rather hard to address. Once the process of oil drilling in Croatia commences, the people viewing the state as a tourist destination may feel the need to express their concerns via modern media; given the number of the users of the specified IT facilities, the issue may be blown out of proportions Therefore, there is a certain number of risk in investing in the project due to the possibility of tourism rates drop.
Since the opportunities for mining, which Croatia has to offer to foreign investors, are beyond impressive, one should consider the Croatian oil depositions a very good investment option. Managing the risks by investing in the inventory and the skilled labour force, one is likely to attain impressive results in the designated area without suffering any damage. Financing the project and adopting an elaborate strategy in the choice of the human and inventory resources, therefore, must be viewed as the primary investment decision to be made by the businesses interested in exploring Croatia as an oil resource. Therefore, the Croatian oil deposits can be deemed as a rather promising option as long as the investors take the needs of the local residents and the specifics of the state economy into account.
Reference List
Agwu, O A, Ilori, M O,& Nwachukwu, S U 2013, ‘Utilization of drilling fluid base oil hydrocarbons by microorganisms isolated from diesel-polluted soil’, Soil & Sediment Contamination, vol. 22, no. 7, pp. 817–828.
Barron, M G 2012, ‘Ecological Impacts of the deepwater horizon oil spill: Implications for immunotoxicity’, Toxicologic Pathology, vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 315-320.
Bernardini, A, David, M, Perkovic, M, & Tarchi, D 2014, ‘Towards an operational use of space imagery for oil pollution monitoring in the Mediterranean basin: A demonstration in the Adriatic Sea’, Marine Pollution Bulletin, vol. 54, no. 4, pp. 403–422.
Hrvoje, C 2011, ‘Cruising tourism environmental impacts: Case study of Dubrovnik, Croatia’, Journal of Coastal Research, vol. 61, no. 1, pp. 104–113.
Loncar, G, Leder, N, & Paladin, M 2012, ‘Numerical modelling of an oil spill in the northern Adriatic.’,Oceanologia, vol. 54, no. 2, pp. 143–173.
Omerzel, O D, & Jurdana, J D 2015, ‘The predictors of innovativeness in the tourism industry: a comparative study between Croatia and Slovenia’, Tourism in South East Europe, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 75–88.
Sustar, K 2012, ‘The contemporary development of tourism in Croatia. Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality Management in Opatija. Biennial International Congress’, Tourism & Hospitality Industry, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 429–446.
Welcome to X Drilling Tools 2015. Web.
Wills, J 2013, ‘US environmental history: Inviting doomsday. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.