Babaev
V.V., Dyachuk V.V., Lizanets A.V.
GEOETHICAL PROBLEMS OF OIL AND GAS GEOLOGY
Dialectical contradictions between the man -
the user of the entrails of
the Earth - and the environment become increasingly clearly defined
with the civilization progress. The range of variations in the ecological
situation expands so intensively that a grave threat to life existence on the
Earth arises. The quantitative and qualitative variations of natural factors
become threating and may cause a global ecological crisis. Thus the question of the
environmental care progressively comes into play on the present stage of the mankind
development. This is an unavoidable process and a
balanced existence of the biosphere depends on it. V.I. Vernadsky wrote: «If
mankind has became the determining factor of the biosphere evolution and it cannot exist beyond biosphere, it is
due to assure the trend of its development and then mankind will provide its
future». It is particularly difficult to realize this aim on
the background of sometimes diametrically opposite political, ideological and
economical principles during the conflict of morals, standards and dogmas in
people’s consciousness. Specifically, the manifestation of the predatory
treatment of nature is evident in many examples of intensive production development and of oil and
gas industry.
The Earth sciences - and
geology above all - are liable to put the ponderable contribution to solving
mankind’s global problems on the basis of changes in personal and social
consciousness and
in a new societal mentality forming. According to
A. Schweitzer, «Ethics is the boundless responsibility for everything,
which is living».
Cultivating a high
mentality in entrails exploitation and hydrocarbon deposits in particular is,
in our opinion, among the most important tasks of oil and gas geology. The
predominant part there, undoubtedly, is possessed by a new science - the
geoethics.
Geoethics above
all can be perceived as a science about a highly moral
human interaction with Earth resources, the ethical behavior of man since prospecting during exploration, exploitation of hydrocarbon raw fields, to transportation
to consuming and treatment sites. Neglecting ethical
standards - when solving practical tasks - is widely caused by human
insufficient moral training, by his underestimation of interdependency of
processes in the «noosphere» and their mobile equilibrium.
Oil and gas geology by virtue of its
specificity has an effect upon the environment because it is a
source of different waste products during many stages of the industrial
production and the rate of its influence depends largely on the morality of the appropriate specialists.