By Eleonora de Sabata and Guy Dinmore in Rome, Aug 10, 2010

 

“No drilling” posters are appearing on Sicily’s tourist-packed beaches as local activists and politicians start mobilising against plans by international companies to explore for oil in the island’s waters.

With concerns heightened by BP’s disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Sicily’s parliament and regional authority have voiced strong objections to Italy’s central government, while a dozen mayors are to meet this week to prepare a joint protest to Rome.

Some mayors only learned from the media that rigs might soon be coming, and that one Australian company has already started deepwater drilling near a planned marine reserve off the volcanic island of Pantelleria.

“We are not against development, but this kind of activity jeopardises the biggest asset we have -- the environment,” Roberto Di Mauro, Sicily’s environment director, told the Financial Times.

“We don’t want history to repeat itself,“ he said, referring to the construction in the 1960s of oil refineries that polluted stretches of southern Sicily.

In one of his last acts in office, Claudio Scajola, minister of industry, issued new procedures for offshore drilling in Italy on April 26 -- less than a week after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico.

He also issued new licences, bringing to a total of 20 for exploratory work off Italy, including 12 near Sicily. Days later he resigned while under investigation for suspected corruption in allocating government building contracts. He denies wrongdoing.

In issuing the licences, Mr Scajola applied a law passed earlier by the centre-right government which sidelines local authorities from the process.

But coastal communities fear some drilling will be close to marine parks and underwater volcanoes. They also object that some licences were given to small companies with limited financial resources to deal with a possible disaster.

The Sicilian Strait, where much of the drilling will take place, was identified by the UN Environment Programme on June 1 as a priority area for conservation. It provides breeding grounds for tuna, swordfish, sharks and turtles and is an important habitat for birds, whales and dolphins.

Its waters are constantly revealing secrets, including deepsea coral gardens found near Pantelleria only last year.

“Areas we thought were devoid of life have yielded thousands of living species,” says professor Roberto Danovaro who this year discovered, deep in the Mediterranean, the world’s first known creature to live without oxygen. “We cannot afford to lose what we don’t yet fully know.”

ADX, an Australian company, began deepwater drilling for oil in the Lambouka-1 field last week, at 600m of depth. Its rig is on the Tunisian side but lies only one mile from Italian waters surrounding Pantelleria.

In case of a major spill, ADX would deploy clean-up vessels from Tunis, 70 miles away, even though its rig is just 13 miles off Pantelleria and the main currents flow towards the crystal clear waters of the Italian island.

Pantelleria -- which the environment ministry says will soon be declared a marine reserve -- has no vessels to deal with an oil spill. Neither the local authorities nor the Italian Coast Guard were informed about the drilling operations.

Wolfgang Zimmer, managing director of ADX, stressed his company’s safety record and says Lambouka-1 could be the Mediterranean’s most exciting prospect. ADX also has permission to operate in the Italian section of the field.

Speaking to the FT, he admitted he did not even know that deepwater corals existed. ADX was drilling in mud, he said.

Pantelleria’s predicament has highlighted confusion within the Italian government over future deepwater drilling, and the lack of Mediterranean-wide coordination, despite risks to the sea’s confined waters.

Stefania Prestigiacomo, environment minister, angered the oil industry and surprised her colleagues when she told the FT last month that she favoured the idea of a moratorium on deepwater drilling in light of BP’s Gulf of Mexico spill.

Franco Frattini, foreign minister, said the issue should be referred to the Union of the Mediterranean, a community of EU and littoral states that has yet to gain traction two years after being proposed by France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Italian officials point out that four rigs operated by Italy’s Eni and Edison have extracted oil from shallow Sicilian waters since the 1980s without major accidents. Production last year rose 130 per cent.

Environmental protection sources reply that government cuts have undermined Italy’s readiness to deal with a major spill even as it prepares to expand drilling around its waters.

According to the industry ministry, Italian and foreign companies that requested licences to explore for oil or gas off Sicily include: Eni, Edison, ADX, BG International, Northern Petroleum, Shell Italia, Northsun Italia, Petroceltic, Hunt Oil, San Leon Energy, Nautical Petroleum, Puma Petroleum and Sviluppo Risorse Naturali.