Towards sustainability in the petroleum industry: initiatives, technologies, innovation and industry dynamics

The recent transformations of the global world impose new approaches for the petroleum industry's evolution. The petroleum industry faces new and numerous challenges ahead. With the widespread global-scale crisis, the volatility of the petroleum prices, the diminishing productivity, and instability supply of the petroleum industry are challenged during the last period and tend to become a certain reality by now. The petroleum industry, among other resource-based industries, increasingly relies on a new generation of technological development while still protecting the classical energy production structures. The energy transition and green revolution imposed a massive reconsideration of the petroleum industry, production, and exploitation. Petroleum industry and petrochemistry contribute significantly in assuring the economic development and the functionality of the traditional industries. In the transition from the classical energy-based industry to a more environmentally friendly and more productive process, petroleum industry and petrochemistry face new challenges and transformations imposed by the highly energy-intensive and consume massive amounts of energy requests. Promoting sustainability in the petroleum industry in terms of initiatives, technologies, innovation, and industry dynamics is a mandatory step to limit the adverse effects of a classical energy policy based on a linear process of exploitation production and processing petroleum resources.

The actual research on the petroleum industry and petrochemistry has been upon exploration, production, resource availability, and technological aspects, usually neglecting wider paradigms and social contexts within which they operate. Designing a large context that deals with sustainability aspects in the petroleum industry in contemporary industrial and economic paradigms fulfills a need to understand the inner core of a resource-based industry. The special issue addresses these wider networks of support and answers to such concerning subjects as ensuring sustainable resources exploitation, promoting green transition, attracting industrial investments, succeeding on high-competitive energy markets, and considering petroleum exploitation potential, green consumption, and environmental constraints for the more competitive and functional industry. To advance the research area, we have developed a special issue, with the topic "Towards sustainability in the petroleum industry: initiatives, technologies, innovation and industry dynamics" to collect the significant impacts and developments of the integrated traditional petroleum-based industry and its main transformations imposed by the green deal and green revolution impacts.

This special issue will provide some holistic approaches regarding the petroleum industry and petrochemistry exploration, production in terms of sustainability as a specific organizational model in a highly competitive industrial paradigm. The objective is to provide relevant theoretical frameworks and the latest empirical research findings in the area of sustainability within the petroleum industry in terms of initiatives, technologies, innovation, and industry dynamics and their impacts on contemporary economies. The submitted manuscripts will be dedicated to specific aspects and suggest solutions regarding sustainability in the petroleum industry. It will consider the initiatives, technologies, innovation, and industry dynamics evolution in the petroleum industry and economy.

The issue will also represent a repository of the highly scientific contributions in petroleum science, production, exploitation, technology, and policy to mitigate the new energy paradigm development. Therefore, this special issue could be considered a proactive platform to share the most recent researches, ideas, innovations, and concerns across the above topics and encourage interdisciplinary research collaboration in the field of energy-related aspects.