The EU offshore safety directive: New croatian safety rules adopted

On 18 July 2013, a new Offshore Safety Directive 2013/30/EU (OSD) came into effect [1]. The OSD, as a response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010, introduced an EU-wide safety and liability regime in order to prevent any major offshore drilling accidents and to limit their consequences in the EU waters. Since the Member States with offshore waters, such as Croatia, have until 19 July 2015 to fully transpose the OSD into national legislation, the Croatian Parliament enacted the new Croatian Act on Safety of Offshore Exploration and Production of Hydrocarbons on 3 July 2015, which shall enter into force on 25 July 2015. The compliance with the new safety and environmental requirements is of special importance, in particular in the context of the upcoming offshore oil and gas exploration activities in the Adriatic Sea.