TAMAN CAMPAIGN

Overview
The Campaign
Our Partner
The Company
The Financing
The Environmental and Health Issues
Background on Taman
History of Activism on Taman
Chushka—Could this be the Future of Volna?
An Alternative Economic Vision—Taman as a Tourist Destination

Overview
Crude Accountability and Environmental Watch on the North Caucasus (EWNC) are working together to stop the development of oil and gas transport terminals on the Taman Peninsula in southwestern Russia. The Russkiy Mir Oil Terminal, currently under construction, is financed by the International Financial Institute (IFC), the private investment arm of World Bank. The project is threatening local communities by destroying their most productive fishing grounds, polluting the air, water and soil and undermining the existing economy, which is based on fishing, tourism and agriculture. The Taman Peninsula is a traditional, isolated community, which is being dramatically changed in negative ways by the development of the IFC-funded Russkiy Mir project.

The terminal is being constructed a stone’s throw from the village of Volna, a fishing town on the Sea of Azov. Extending out into the Sea, the terminal was built on the site of the most productive fishery on the peninsula. Local fishermen are concerned that they will be unable to make a living through fishing as the construction phase of the project finishes and moves toward actual transport of oil and gas. During the current construction phase, industrial sized trucks transport construction materials to the site, destroying the existing roads on the peninsula. Large potholes, destroyed asphalt and the noise and dust from the trucks have damaged the quality of life of the villagers up and down the peninsula. Concerns for the future include worries about air quality, water pollution and soil contamination as the oil and gas are loaded onto tankers; water pollution; seepage from railcars, storage tanks and the tankers themselves; and environmental health concerns related to the enormous quantity of petroleum products that will be stored and transported through the area. And, of course, concerns about an oil spill are very real.

The Campaign
The IFC-financed Russkiy Mir Terminal is creating a development environment in which the infrastructure for additional terminals can be laid, easing the difficulties other oil and gas transport investors may face in this region. By developing the railroad, building roads, and beginning the industrialization of the region, the Russkiy Mir project sets a dangerous and environmentally unsustainable precedent on Taman.

Crude Accountability and EWNC are working with local residents to ensure that their voices are heard, their economic, environmental and human rights are not violated, and to secure a sustainable and environmentally sound future for the Taman Peninsula.

Our Partner
EWNC, Environmental Watch on the North Caucasus, is an environmental organization whose mission is to preserve wild nature and restore a healthy environment to the North Caucasus. Its priorities include biological conservation, public control over the development of environmentally dangerous projects, facilitating communication within the environmental movement and disseminating environmentally significant information. EWNC has been active on the Taman Peninsula since the 1990s and works closely with local activists. EWNC has actively campaigned against a number of large scale Russian oil and gas projects including the CPC and Blue Stream pipelines.

EWNC was founded in 1997 by a group of activists from the Krasnodar and Adygei branches of the Socio-Ecological Union (SEU) and is the leading organization of the SEU in the West Caucasus. Andrey Rudomakha is the Coordinator of EWNC; Dmitry Kaptsov is Vice Coordinator. The organization has thirty-four members.

The Company
Tamanneftegas is the company operating at Russkiy Mir. However, although Tamanneftegas is officially a Russian company, its main operator is the Dutch company, Malmros Continental Property Company BV. The United Transport - Forwarding Company" ("OTEKO"), a management company for the rail tank car fleets of the largest independently owned Russian rail transport companies - JSC SFAT and JSC Russkiy Mir, both of whom have each been active in the oil transportation market for more than ten years, is also active at Russkiy Mir. The Russkiy Mir Oil and Gas Terminal, which has begun construction and has received financing from the IFC, is the first of these terminals to be constructed on the Taman Peninsula. Local residents fear that its completion, along with the refurbishment of a railroad through the middle of the peninsula (also part of the IFC-financed project), which will bring oil and gas to the terminal for transport via tanker across the Black Sea and to the Bosphorus Strait, will literally and figuratively pave the way for other terminals to be constructed with relative ease. Local residents are extremely concerned that their way of life, their environment and their economy will be destroyed by the construction of the Russkiy Mir and other oil terminals on the peninsula.

The Financing
Russkiy Mir is a project of Tamanneftegas, a Russian oil company with investments from the IFC. Tamanneftegas is wholly owned by Malmros Continental Property Company, B.V., which is incorporated in the Netherlands., although it operates an office in Moscow. According to the IFC, as of 2005, the project costs are estimated at $264 million, and the IFC investments are $115 million, which were provided in two loans. The first loan, provided in 2003, was for $15 million to purchase rail cars and related equipment. The second loan, provided in 2005, is financing the construction of the terminal itself as well as railway, equipment and infrastructure financing. The IFC has designated the loan as a Category B loan to the warehousing and transportation sector.

The Environmental and Health Issues
Although the IFC has categorized the project as Category B under the Warehousing and Transportation sector, we believe this is a miscategorization of the project; it should have been handled through the Oil, Gas, Chemicals and Mining Department of the IFC, as the project is entirely connected to oil and gas transportation. The IFC itself states that the “environmental and social issues associated with the Taman terminal include: siting and land acquisition, construction impacts, hazardous materials management, emergency (preparedness and response, terminal pollution and waste management, navigational safety, community engagement, cultural heritage, employee safety, and environmental systems management.” The local population is suffering the effects of the Taman terminal development in virtually each of these categories.

Background on Taman
Traditionally, fishing, farming, wine making and tourism have formed the basis of the local economy, especially on the Taman Peninsula itself. Fields of grapes, wheat and even rice are visible from the roads, and the seashore is lined with traditional fishing nets that drape out hundreds of feet into the sea. The town of Taman boasts an archeological museum with Greek artifacts; the population is proud of its ancient history and claims continual human habitation on the peninsula for 2600 years. Homer wrote about Taman, as did Pushkin and Lermontov; a statue of Lermontov graces the streets of Taman and copies of his short stories are available in the town’s book and tourist shops. The Greeks and Romans, Scythians, Mongols and Russians have taken turns invading this territory and their legacies are felt in many ways, from the archeological finds to the traditions of the people to the annual Greek festival. In addition to the Black and Azov Seas, Taman is home to mud volcanoes with healing clay and an inland Salt Sea, which also holds healing properties in its black, oozing mud. Unpolluted and relatively undeveloped, the Taman Peninsula appears to be the perfect spot to develop sustainable tourism and to continue with the fishing and wine making traditions of the past centuries.

Unfortunately, the current economic plans for the peninsula involve a different type of development: eight oil and gas terminals are planned for the peninsula as the Russian government seeks to turn Taman into the second largest port area in the country. Only Novorossisk will be larger if these plans come to fruition.

History of Activism on Taman
In the 1990s, the Russian company Togliattiazot began building an ammonia terminal on Taman Peninsula. The company applied to the IFC for financing, and a broad-based local campaign against the project began. Environmental Watch on the North Caucasus (EWNC), led by Andrey Rudomakha, spearheaded the campaign, which was ultimately successful in stopping IFC financing and the project.

Activists from EWNC and other environmental organizations camped out on Taman until the project was stopped, receiving support and solidarity from local residents. A number of activists were arrested for blocking the main road to the terminal and spent almost two weeks in prison.

As the Russkiy Mir project gears up, local residents remember the activism against the Togliattiazot project and are opposed to this terminal as well.

Chushka—Could this be the Future of Volna?
The village of Chushka, a former state collective farm and fishery, was previously home to several hundred families. Its population has dramatically declined in the past two years as the Port of Kavkaz is constructed on the edge of the village. Chushka is located on the opposite end of Taman from the Russkiy Mir site, and has been devastated by the construction of the Port of Kavkaz, an oil, gas and chemical terminal that has begun loading and off-loading petroleum products and other chemicals for shipment out of the Sea of Azov and into the Black Sea.

The village is entirely located within the Sanitary Protection Zone of the port, and, according to Russian Federation law, should have been relocated and compensated by the company, Port of Kavkaz. However, a proper relocation has not occurred and the village’s most vulnerable population—elderly people and single women with children—have been left in the community. Their air is polluted by heavy petroleum fumes from the port, and children are beginning to get ill: nose bleeds, skin rashes, vision problems and other health problems. Many of the symptoms described by the Chushka villagers were identical to the problems encountered in Berezovka, Kazakhstan, which is located near the Karachaganak Oil and Gas Condensate Field and whose population also suffers from severe air pollution from oil and gas emissions.

Crude Accountability and EWNC interviewed several women from the village in May 2007, who told us how they had been intimidated and effectively evicted from their home by thugs from Port of Kavkaz in September 2006. A number of families lived in a dormitory on the edge of the village. They worked at the Port of Kavkaz and were long-time residents of Chushka. Several women told us they had lived in the community for over thirty years.

Local residents told us their story: They were woken up at 6AM on September 6th, 2006 as they heard cars braking outside their dormitory. A group of men ran from the cars, carrying sledge-hammers and other tools, climbed the roof, and began smashing in the roof. At the time, children and women were asleep inside the building. In the mayhem that followed, the women woke their children and removed them from the building to protect them from the roof as it fell in around them. When they demanded that the men stop destroying the building, they were told that they were “renovating” the building, that it belonged to them, and that the women had no rights. They then smashed in all the windows, boarded them up and claimed that the building was uninhabitable.

A group of the women who were living in the dormitory sued the owner of Port of Kavkaz claiming that he had destroyed their home. They provided their documents, entitling them to live in the building to the judge and demanded that the Director of Port of Kavkaz show his ownership documents. He claimed to have lost them, but the villagers have yet to win their case in court. Some of them spent the winter months living in their summer kitchens (rooms with no heat, gas or insulation), and all of them are seeking compensation for their loss.

Around twenty-five families remain in Chushka, awaiting the compensation that is rightfully theirs from Port of Kavkaz. In a clear case of corruption, the Director of the company, Mr. Viktor Mikhailovich Zelenskiy, continues to operate the Port, has paid no compensation and states that the compensation claims the villagers have made are unreasonable. Most of the remaining residents of the village have lived there for over 30 years. They were part of the original community that built the village, worked in the fishing collective and made a living off the land. They have built their homes, worked their gardens, put in banyas and built fishing boats. From one side of the village they see a Ramsar wetlands site; from the other, they can swim in the Sea of Azov. As one woman stated, “How can they compensate us for leaving such a beautiful place? They have taken everything from us.”

An Alternative Economic Vision—Taman as a Tourist Destination
Taman residents do not want to change their way of life. They are eager to preserve the cultural history, environmental beauty, and sustainable way of living that they have enjoyed for centuries. Taman boasts two thousand six hundred years of continuous human habitation—without oil and gas terminals and the pollution, illness and degradation that threaten the peninsula with their introduction.

Local residents are interested in continuing their traditions of tourism, recreation, fishing and agriculture. With careful, sustainable planning and investment, this would be possible. Taman residents envision an economic future that protects and maintains their current way of life. Oil and gas development—and the development of the Russkiy Mir Terminal—threaten this vision of a sustainable, healthy future.