At the tip of the pipe

(Photo: Max Novikov )

On the water of the Novorossiysk seaport covered with a continuous film of oil, two huge red floats are quietly swaying. These are remote mooring devices (SPU), which should end the main oil pipeline starting at the Tengiz field in Kazakhstan. As the owners of the floats, the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), suggest, one of them will fill the first tanker with Tengiz oil in July next year. Unless a referendum on the location of an oil terminal is held in the city first, after which everything will have to start all over again.

Georeferencing
According to the project, the 1,500-kilometer pipeline will reach the sea near the village of Yuzhnaya Ozereyka, located a few kilometers from Novorossiysk and within the administrative boundaries of the city. Not far from this place, near the village of Glebovka - where the pipeline crosses the last mountain ridge and begins its descent - a million-ton reservoir is being built. From there, the oil will flow by gravity to the shore, and then to the sea - through pipes laid along the seabed. About five kilometers from the coast it will reach the TPM, where tankers refueling with Tengiz oil will moor. “There are about 500 devices of this type currently operating in the world,” says Viktor Dolgov, head of the western region of CPC. “The probability of accidents on them is approximately one in a million. But even if a spill occurs, within a few minutes there will be oil recovery vessels in its place, the parking of which "is provided at the point where the pipeline exits to the sea. In addition, the wind pattern in the area is such that the slick will most likely be driven into the open sea, where it can be dealt with without much difficulty."

Chief researcher at the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Russia's largest expert on the relationship between the sea and oil products, Lev Gurvich, who participated in assessing the terminal's environmental impact, paints, to put it mildly, a different picture: according to world statistics, on devices of this type there is one oil spill every 18 tanker calls (however, most often these are relatively small spills - hundreds of tons). The further calculation is simple: the terminal's design capacity is 67 million tons of oil annually (the capacity of the first stage currently under construction is 28 million tons). Even if it is transported exclusively by the largest modern supertankers with a carrying capacity of 300 thousand tons, this will require 220 ship calls per year. We divide 220 by 18 and on average we get that spills at the CPC terminal will occur monthly. Moreover, even if oil recovery vessels are able to go to sea (accidents most often occur during storms) and are on site instantly, they will need time to block the slick with barrier booms. Meanwhile, the “moryachok” (southwest wind) in the Novorossiysk area blows often and sometimes reaches hurricane force, throwing huge ships ashore. With a wind speed of 10 meters per second (during a storm it can be three times higher), just 2 hours after a pipe burst or a tanker crashes, all the spilled oil will be on the shore, and no oil gathering fleet will be able to prevent this.

Experts also expressed a lot of other complaints about the project - the text of the conclusion of the state environmental assessment contains hundreds of comments from purely editorial (the layout of the text, graphic materials and applications is unsuccessful, the title of the volume may not correspond to its content, etc.) to the most fundamental: lack of calculation of the maximum accident , assessment of the consequences of a possible earthquake (Novorossiysk is located in a tectonically active area), insurance guarantees in case of an accident, a system for treating wastewater from terminal facilities and incoming ships, a system for collecting liquid hydrocarbon vapors, etc. However, all experts, except two three who were absent when the commission completed its work signed a positive conclusion - no one dared to express a dissenting opinion. It is expected that the comments will be taken into account when implementing the project. Or they won't. This is as the applicant wishes - after all, he has a positive expert opinion in his hands, and the law does not provide for liability for ignoring recommendations made orally by experts.

It is possible, however, that some kind of insurance fund will still be created. (The work plans of CPC actually include “resolving the issue of liability insurance” with a deadline of “February 2001”. However, Mr. Dolgov not only did not name any amounts, but did not even explain whose responsibility and to whom this is talking about clause - either on the payment of compensation to residents and the region in the event of an accident, or on the payment of a penalty to the consortium participants in the event of a project failure.) I wonder what the amount of compensation should be so that this money can be used to restore the famous beaches of Anapa if oil from the broken three hundred thousand meters will flood them? Or the territory of the Utrish Biosphere Reserve currently being created - the only 14-kilometer strip of the Black Sea coastline that has not been altered by humans in Russia? Of course, the oil spill will not reach the unique juniper forests covering the coastal mountains, but the coastal vegetation, underwater fields of algae and filter-feeding mollusks that currently provide purification of the Black Sea water, fish and dolphins migrating along the coast, and seabirds will have to say goodbye: if they will all die, then they will never be returned for any money.


The head of the western region of CPC, Viktor Dolgov, is convinced that there is simply no room for a new terminal in Tsemes Bay. The Greens and the local branch of Transneft are of the opposite opinion. (Photo: Max Novikov )

In three branches of government
Fish and birds do not have the slightest chance to influence the situation. But people are trying to do something.

Soon after the terminal project was approved by the environmental assessment, several Novorossiysk and Anapa environmental organizations and individual activists filed a lawsuit to invalidate its conclusion. The reason was that during the construction of CPC facilities, work was carried out (an artificial toe made of imported pebbles, etc.) was carried out that was not specified in the project; by law, this means automatic cancellation of the examination. The case traveled for a long time from the Krasnodar Territory to Moscow, from the general court to the arbitration court and back. (At the same time, the lawyer of the CTC, participating in the consideration as a “third party”, petitioned in the Novorossiysk court to transfer the case to arbitration, and in the arbitration court - to return it to a court of general jurisdiction. It is very difficult to explain such tactics with anything other than the desire to take as long as possible delay the consideration of the case on the merits.) Now it lies in the Krasnopresnensky Court of Moscow - at the location of the defendant, which is the Federal State Committee on Ecology, which approved the results of the examination. The next meeting is scheduled for June 14. It is unclear, however, who will now be responsible for it - after all, the State Committee for Ecology has been abolished. The terminal will be built soon, but the matter will not be considered soon...

Another line of attack was the demand for a local referendum on the fate of the terminal. Residents of coastal villages live mainly at the expense of holidaymakers and townspeople, to whom they sell vegetables, fruits and milk, and even the theoretical prospect of an accident directly threatens their interests. South Ozereyka has a special history: back in 1990, a self-government committee was created here, headed by musician and entrepreneur Ivan (Yanis) Karakezidi. The committee distributed the land of the former state farm among the village residents, achieved noticeable success in improvement (a school was opened, a telephone was installed in every house, the streets were paved), planned the construction of small hotels, ordered a project for aquaculture... The arrival of the CPC crossed out all plans: heavy pipe trucks the roads were broken, the grazing became a transshipment base. Part of the land was taken away from 12 village residents - without any compensation, although according to KTK documents, everything was paid to everyone. (In general, the topic of money given by the consortium, but not reaching the recipient, is constantly heard in Novorossiysk. At the very beginning of the epic, CPC transferred about 7 million dollars to the city as “preliminary compensation”. Even deputies of the city duma were unable to find out where it went - their official request was simply not answered. As one of the city hall employees said informally, “the city charter states that you have the right to make a request, but it does not say that we are obliged to respond to it.”) Actual power in the village passed into the hands of a “commissioner for South Ozereyka” specially appointed by the city administration. And what kind of vacationer would come to relax at an oil port, even if the terminal actually didn’t spill a drop of oil into the sea? However, the assurances of the consortium representatives of the absolute safety of the project are not taken seriously here: among the village residents there were their own specialists - a former gas producer from Taimyr, a former tanker captain, who decided to live by the warm sea after retirement and know what pipeline and sea transportation of petroleum products is.

The proximity of South Ozereyka to the center of events and the presence of a capable group of activists made it a kind of center of resistance to the project. But in other coastal villages, and in sanatoriums and boarding houses scattered along the coast, and in the city itself, the attitude towards the project is sharply negative: construction will provide work for a maximum of several hundred people, and its result will threaten everyone. According to the Greens, they are supported by about 90 percent of the city's residents. Representatives of the CPC deny this, but do not provide any data of their own, and most importantly, they categorically object to holding a referendum. The city was spared the phrase said by a senior employee of the CPC office in response to the proposal to finance the plebiscite: “It’s like paying for the services of your own killer!”

On September 30 last year, the Novorossiysk City Duma registered an initiative group to hold a referendum (it included the city “greens”, the already mentioned Yanis Karakezidi, City Duma deputy Ivan Garmash and others). The mayor of the city, Valery Prokhorenko, vetoed this decision: the fate of the strategic international pipeline cannot be decided by the will of the residents of Novorossiysk.

Valery Georgievich was disingenuous. Although his opponents (and not only them - “Itogi” # 44, 1999) are quite skeptical about the commercial prospects of the project itself and its benefits for the economy of the country and the region, none of them objects either to the pipeline as such or to so that its terminal is in Novorossiysk. As you know, this city is located on the shores of a rather long Tsemes Bay. On its southeastern shore, on Cape Sheskharis, an oil terminal has long been operating, owned by Chernomortransneft, a regional structure of Transneft. There is an oil gathering fleet there, the Tsemes Bay itself can be quickly blocked off by booms if something happens, and it is still better protected from winds from land than the open sea five miles from the flat shore. If an accident occurs during a “sailor’s accident,” the oil will not go beyond port berths that have no environmental value, which are much easier to clean than beaches. Opponents of the Yuzhno Ozereysk terminal propose moving it to Sheskharis or simply modernizing the existing terminal, increasing its capacity and pumping Tengiz oil through it. Viktor Dolgov believes that this is impossible: there is physically no room on Sheskharis for a tank of the required capacity, and the movement of an additional number of huge tankers in a narrow bay will create a dangerous situation. Opponents object: the Novorossiysk port is underutilized, and Transneft has more than once expressed its readiness to pump Tengiz oil. The question of where exactly the terminal should be located within the city may well be resolved by a city referendum.

Be that as it may, on February 9, the City Duma overcame the mayor’s veto and re-registered the initiative group. After this, the initiators of the referendum were to receive signature sheets approved by the Duma, a list of authorized representatives and permission to open an account and begin collecting signatures, and the Duma itself was to form a commission to conduct the referendum. None of this was done, and in the meantime the 35-day period established by law expired, during which the group was supposed to collect signatures for holding a plebiscite. The situation has reached a dead end.

The initiators turned to the regional election commission - they were sent the answer: yes, they say, you are right, you should be given everything you are owed, as indicated by the City Duma and the mayor. Having lost their way through the intricate tangles of two branches of power, the initiators were again forced to turn to the third - to the leisurely Russian Themis. As it turned out, the mayor of the city also applied there with a claim to declare the registration of the initiative group illegal (the arguments are the same as those of the overridden veto). The city court immediately postponed consideration of the environmentalists' claim until consideration of the mayor's claim: in fact, if the latter is satisfied, then the need to deal with the former will disappear by itself. It is unknown when this will be resolved: the courts are busy, and the side that is satisfied with the status quo has a lot of legal ways to stall. So far, the court has ordered a psycholinguistic examination of the referendum issues - whether there is any agitation in them...

In terms of information, both the administration and CPC employees went on the defensive, not even trying to conduct their own propaganda campaign, but clearly hoping to prevent a referendum from being held - at least until the terminal was put into operation. Even to simple questions - what the city receives and will receive from the implementation of the CPC project, whether it can monitor the implementation of the recommendations of the environmental assessment, etc. - there was no one to answer in the city administration: the top officials were all on business trips, and Anna Korchagina, an assistant to one of the vice-mayors who oversees environmental issues at the mayor’s office, kept up small talk about the general problems of relations between regions and corporations in the field of environmental protection and, smiling sweetly, threw up her hands whenever a specific answer was required. The commissioner for South Ozereyka, Valentin Lopatin, was more frank: “Why do I need our point of view to be heard somewhere in Itogi? We have Novorossiysk Worker, our residents read and respect it, but I don’t have to talk to you.” .

Meanwhile... In neighboring Gelendzhik, simultaneously with the presidential elections, a local referendum was held, in which the overwhelming majority of city residents spoke out against the construction of a new seaport there (there, however, both branches of city government share the sentiments of their voters). In South Ozereyka, on one Sunday in March, a village meeting was held, which decided to resume the activities of the self-government committee and demand the immediate cessation of work. And during the construction of the reservoir and terminal, this Sunday became a regular working day.

I wonder what will happen first: the decision of the Moscow court on the case of environmental assessment, the Novorossiysk court on holding a referendum, or the first accident with an oil spill?


Residents of coastal villages live mainly at the expense of holidaymakers, and even the theoretical prospect of an accident threatens their interests. (Photo: Max Novikov)