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BULGARIA: Challenge to Pipeline Grows


According to construction plans, tankers from the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk in Russia will bring oil to Burgas. According to the activists, the buoys will be placed seven kilometres from Burgas and only 40 metres deep. Additionally, about 1,000 new jobs will be created for the construction and exploitation works. From there, the pipeline will take it to the Greek port Alexandroupolis, to be picked up again by tankers transporting it to the Mediterranean. Greeks from the northeast region Evros, where Alexandroupolis is situated, have also declared their intention to vote on the pipeline. In spite of the results in Burgas, inhabitants of a neighbouring seaside town in Bulgaria, Sozopol, have announced that they too will hold a local referendum. Local authorities have also complained that most of the income from the pipeline will be channelled to the central government rather than to the Burgas municipality. No Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) study has been conducted yet. 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. 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 will be safer. The Bulgarian government has announced that the pipeline, expected to start functioning in 2011-2012, can bring a yearly income of 35 million dollars (approximately 24 million euro). 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. 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. 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. They have asked the government in Sofia to organise a national poll. 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. Under Bulgarian law, even a successful referendum will not have been legally binding. 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. 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.