Environmental impact of oil transportation by tankers, pipelines, railway

Full text : Considering all types of risks (technical, operational, natural hazards (e.g. geo-hazards) and third party intrusion), the underground pipelines constructed in accordance with the international standards are the most safe and reliable system for oil transportation. Statistical data provided by CONCAWE and US Department of Transportation confirms that the pipeline related spills are rare and mainly related to the old pipelines. Georgia's experience yet confirms the general sound guess that the situation in our countries is not the same as in western Europe or USA and accordingly the CONCAWE statistical data can not be applied mechanically. Two spills (although small and manageable), during the recent 4 years and some discovered illegal hot-taps on the Baku-Supsa pipeline indicate that the issue of third party intrusion risks is much higher in the region and well organized security system is required to protect the pipeline from intentional damage. Of course the pipeline system can not function isolated and it is integrated with the other systems of oil transportation, mainly with off-shore terminals and tankers. The most significant of the recorded pollution damages are related to the tanker collisions (like Prestige and Exxon Valdez cases). The basic fact, which we would like to stress, is that the environmental risks related to the tanker collisions are much higher for such confined or semi-confined systems as Black and Caspian seas. The overloading of the Black Sea transportation capacity and especially its limiting narrow point - the Bosporus will inevitably lead in future to the implementation of the restrictive measures limiting transportation of oil by tankers in the Black Sea. Therefore, the role of the BTC pipeline as major transportation system will increase significantly. We consider that responsibility of the scientific society is to facilitate this process as soon as the BTC pipeline is functional. The railway transportation of oil is quite vulnerable. Several cases of railway incidents have occurred during last ten years in Georgia and several tanks with oil have been released in the rivers causing significant contamination. The railway infrastructure needs significant improvement and strict control. The railway tanks for oil transportation should be also technically improved to minimize emissions and risks of leakage. Yet we can not avoid the fact that the railways are very often crossing the populated areas and the risks for the human life in case of collision (e.g. third party intentional actions or operational faults) are high. Very important fact is that the National Plan for Oil Spill Contingency in Georgia is almost 95% focused on off-shore spills and in fact no plan exists for the on-shore spills except the corporative oil spill plans provided by BP for the BTC and WREP pipelines. The Government has in fact no capacity to react on railway related oil spills or leakages from other pipeline systems. The government has no capacity for being involved in oil spill response actions organized by BP in case of spills from the BTC or WREP pipelines. There is no organized governmental system for emergency situations. Even BP has not introduced yet the oil spill related fire response plans (and the fires are highly probable in the cases of oil spills cause by terrorist attacks). The general system for emergency response and particularly system of fire response should be organized in the countries of the Region