The benefits of oil production in the Abkhazian sector of the Black Sea offshore area are doubtful, but no protests have been launched yet.
The Russian Rosneft Oil Company is ready to invest 15 billion rubles in Abkhazia’s offshore area for a geological survey and petrol station system development. The Republic’s president, Sergei Bagapsh, insists on the importance of the project for the country, and he is certain that oil-production will not harm the environment in the region. He also said again that vessels entering the Batumi and Abkhaz harbors every year cause more damage to the ecology of the region than an offshore platform does in five years. This point of view is supported by the head of Rosneft.
The whole situation seems to be urging tourists to hurry up and visit while the republic still runs a travel and not a petroleum business. Attempts to combine oil-production and a clean environment were made earlier, but all of them failed and Baku is a fine example of this. However, oil-production in Baku started long ago, back in Soviet times, so the technology there is inferior to modern equipment. The Azerbaijani rich oil reserves were one of the main factors that assured Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two so the damage to the ecology is somewhat justified.
However, the Abkhaz oil resources are not rich at all, while Abkhaz nature is truly remarkable, and even Soviet authorities, as far from environment protection activities as they were, realized that. The Abkhaz landscape and coast shelter rare and endangered kinds of trees and plants, the Turkish pine for instance, while the sky-blue sea is clean and warm. A lot of tourists are fond of travelling to Abkhazia despite the immense infrastructural problems. The negligence of the authorities cannot spoil this wild paradise, but an oil patch can.
The supporters of petroleum production in Abkhazia project may indicate that the oil processing from the sea-bed based on modern technologies is for the most part environmental-friendly, but the Mexican Gulf disaster proves otherwise. There are 1,485 oil wells in Caspian offshore zone, and, according to Kazakh ecologists, 150 of them spill oil into the sea.
The first president of Abkhazia, Vladislav Ardzinba, was strictly against oil production in his country, though he had to wage the war for independence and needed energy resources as much as Soviet authorities needed them during World War Two.
Oleg Kushati. Exclusively to VK.
