C’è voluta una settimana di continue telefonate, ma la costanza ha premiato: la ministra italiana dell’ambiente Prestigiacomo ha pronunciato la parola “moratoria”....

MOVE TO HALT BP FROM DRILLING IN LIBYA

By Guy Dinmore and Eleonora de Sabata in Rome

Published on the Financial Times: August 1 2010

Plans by BP to start drilling for oil and gas off Libya within weeks have prompted growing calls for a moratorium on deepwater operations while Mediterranean states assess the environmental impact in light of the Gulf of Mexico disaster.

Stefania Prestigiacomo, Italy’s environment minister, has become the first senior official within the European Union to suggest that a moratorium might be appropriate while the Mediterranean’s 21 littoral states find a “common voice”.

Plans for deepwater drilling in the confined waters of the Mediterranean “give rise to serious concern”, she told the Financial Times in written comments.

Referring to a proposal by Günther Oettinger, the EU’s energy commissioner, for a moratorium within EU waters, she added: “A moratorium could be a right approach for potentially dangerous drilling . . . to give Europe time to define a new and specific strategy for the Mediterranean especially in light of the risk exposed by the Deepwater Horizon spill.”

BP confirmed on Sunday night that it had a rig in place preparing for deepwater drilliing in Libya’s Gulf of Sirte, but that no firm date had been set for the start of drilling. The company said last week that it would begin drilling the first of five wells in the area “within weeks”. The well is to be about 200 metres deeper than the Macondo well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon rig which exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and causing the most serious environmental disaster in US waters.

Environmental groups as well as local Italian politicians and Italy’s opposition Democratic party have also called for a suspension of deepwater drilling in the Mediterranean. Libya’s Gulf of Sirte lies some 500km from Italian and Maltese territory.

BP shrugged off calls for a moratorium. “There isn’t one suggested,” a BP spokesman told the FT. “And who is the authority for the ‘Med’?” he asked.

BP’s comments reflect the lack of an institutional mechanism co-ordinating Mediterranean-wide policies while individual states – including Italy – have recently approved a considerable number of oil and gas exploration projects of their own, some in deep waters.

Franco Frattini, Italy’s foreign minister, last week suggested that BP’s activities in the Gulf of Sirte be referred to the Union for the Mediterranean. But the proposed community of EU and littoral states has had a difficult birth, first stalled by internal EU rivalries and then complicated by tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbours.

There are questions over whether Mediterranean states are equipped to deal with an oil spill of that magnitude.

The Malta-based UN agency charged with co-ordinating responses to maritime pollution in the Mediterranean says Libya does not yet have a national contingency plan for oil spill response but is working on one.

Data provided by the Libyan authorities to Rempec – the Regional Marine Pollution Emergency Response Centre – says they have the equipment to tackle a big spill.

But senior Italian officials in the environmental protection sector, who asked not to be named, insisted that other Mediterranean states lacked the capacity to deal with a spill on the scale of the Gulf of Mexico disaster. Italian budget cuts had undermined what had once been one of Europe’s most advanced response systems, they said.

Rempec points out that even with a massive response only 10 per cent of oil spilt in disasters is recovered.

Environmentalists are concerned about the impact of a possible spill on the Mediterranean’s diverse sea life.

BP said its preparations for drilling in Libyan waters were “extensive, rigorous and detailed” and said it would not start any operation before it was fully confident it would be safe and efficient. BP said its spill contingency plan was based on “the standard industry three-tier model for preparedness”.