ROMANIA, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy have signed an agreement to construct an oil pipeline system that will connect the Black Sea with western and central Europe, the Croatian Economy Ministry said today. The agreement to progress plans for the 1400-km long, $3-billion Pan-European Oil Pipeline (PEOP) was also be signed by the EU Commissioner for energy, Andris Piebalgs, at an April meeting in Zagreb.
The pipeline will connect the Romanian port of Constanta with Trieste in Italy. Much of the pipeline is in fact already built, as the system will use existing networks in the participating countries; exceptions are links between Pitesti, Romania, and Pancevo, Serbia, and between Croatia's northern Adriatic region through Slovenia to Trieste. The pipeline's capacity is put at 60-90m tons/yr of crude oil, supplied from the Caspian basin to refineries in northern Italy and central Europe. The project was to be signed last year but it was delayed due to environmental concerns in Slovenia. The transport of crude through PEOP is planned to start in 2012 at the earliest. The first phase of the work on PEOP will include a comprehensive study on its environmental impact.
Because of environmental concerns, Croatia is reported virtually to have scrapped another oil pipeline project, the Druzhba-Adria, which was intended to connect Russian oilfields with the Adriatic coast.
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