BULGARIA: Challenge to Pipeline Grows

By Claudia Ciobanu Reprint | | Print |

Claudia Ciobanu

BUCHAREST, Feb 20 2008 (IPS) - The Bulgarian government is committed to building an oil pipeline through the seaside town of Burgas, but local people are starting to complain they were not consulted before a potentially harmful deal was made in their name.

Situated on the Black Sea Coast, by the side of a bay and a group of beautiful lakes, Burgas is the main summer holiday destination in Bulgaria. With a population of 220,000, Burgas has also been receiving an increasing number of foreign tourists, drawn by its beauty and the cheap prices.

The town is also the location of the most important Bulgarian port, which led to its inclusion in the project for the Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline. The pipeline is meant to bring oil from the Caspian Sea and Russia to Europe and on to the United States, through a route that bypasses the crowded Bosphorus strait.

According to construction plans, tankers from the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk in Russia will bring oil to Burgas. From there, the pipeline will take it to the Greek port Alexandroupolis, to be picked up again by tankers transporting it to the Mediterranean.

The Bulgarian government has announced that the pipeline, expected to start functioning in 2011-2012, could bring a yearly income of 35 million dollars (approximately 24 million euro). Additionally, about 1,000 new jobs would be created for the construction and exploitation works. Kalin Rogachev, Bulgaria’s deputy minister for regional development and public works, says the pipeline would “improve people’s economic condition as a whole.”

But Petko Kovatchev, representing the environmental organisation Green Policy Bulgaria, told IPS that such a general and optimistic statement merely represents an expression of “a wrong understanding of development – the common problem of many Bulgarian politicians.”

Government officials have been dismissing fears of possible losses for tourism, and have hardly considered the environmental risks.

No Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) study has been conducted yet. As Petko Kovatchev explains, the fact that inter-governmental agreements have been signed and ratified before the EIA and other analyses are completed means that the government can no longer stop the project even in case of a negative EIA.

While Bulgarian officials and representatives of Transneft – the Russian company with a 51 percent stake in the project – claimsay that the technology for transferring the oil from tankers to the pipe in Burgas has not been decided yet, Bulgarian environmentalists fear that the cheapest and most risky method will be employed.

Representatives of the Citizens’ Initiative Committee for Saving the Burgas Bay and the Black Sea claim that buoys (an “off-shore terminal”) will be used rather than a fixed pier that would be safer. According to the activists, the buoys will be placed seven kilometres from Burgas and only 40 metres deep. Given the capacity of the pipe, meant to carry 35-50 million tonnes of oil a year, this may provoke “spills of 200-300 tonnes of petrol directly into the sea.” Because the Black Sea around Burgas is characterised by weak currents, eventual oil spots would take a long time to disperse.

Opponents of the pipeline further argue that tankers passing as close as five kilometres to the beaches in Burgas will deter tourists. “If the outflow of tourists amounts to just 5 percent of the approximate number for 2007,” says the Citizens Initiative Committee, “every year the southern Black Sea coast will lose three times more money than what Bulgaria will gain from the Bourgas-Alexandroupolis project.”

Furthermore, most of the new jobs will only be available for the duration of the construction works. Local authorities have also complained that most of the income from the pipeline would be channelled to the central government rather than to the Burgas municipality.

With such arguments in mind, inhabitants of Burgas have taken to the streets twice to protest against the pipeline since the deal was signed Jan. 11.

On Feb. 18, a local referendum on the project was organised in the town. This was the first referendum in post-socialist Bulgaria.

A study conducted by the National Opinion Research Centre concluded that information available to voters was insufficient. Participation, estimated at 27 percent, was not enough to validate the results, but 96.75 percent of those who voted declared themselves against the pipeline.

The fact that close to 50,000 people said “no” to the pipeline is a significant result, said Petko Kovatchev from Green Policy, one of the groups spearheading the campaign in Burgas. He said environmentalists would present this result to the European Union and to potential donors.

The mayor of Burgas, Dimitar Nikolov, representing the opposition party Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria (GERB), said the number of people in Burgas opposing the pipeline surpassed those who voted in 2006 for current President of Bulgaria, Georgi Parvanov.

Under Bulgarian law, even a successful referendum would not have been legally binding.

In spite of the results in Burgas, inhabitants of a neighbouring seaside town in Bulgaria, Sozopol, have announced that they too would hold a local referendum. They have asked the government in Sofia to organise a national poll. Greeks from the northeast region Evros, where Alexandroupolis is situated, have also declared their intention to vote on the pipeline.