ABSTRACT
Petroleum is also the world’s largest source of relatively cheap raw materials for the production of petroleum products, like lubricants, and feedstock for the petrochemical industry, to produce a multitude of petro-chemical products. Because of the scale of petroleum consumption and petroleum transport, the imissions into the environment as a result of the human errors, defects or spillages may be small as a percentage, but in absolute terms they can be impressive. Small marine spillages are environmentally usually harmless. Due to processes of the evaporation, photo-oxydation, solubilization and biodegradation, petroleum spilled at sea in relatively small quantities generally disappears quickly. In addition to hydrocarbons, petroleum also contains the sulfur and nitrogen compounds some of which end up in the diesel oil. The sulfur containing compounds are objectionable, because they have a disagreeable odour and readily dissolve into the ground water.
