Croatia’s national oil and gas company INA announced their plan to permanently abandon the site of the sunken gas platform Ivana D-1 in the northern Adriatic on Monday, leading to opposition from environmentalists.
The unmanned platform, located some 50 kilometres off the coast of Pula, sank in an unusually strong storm in December 2020.
INA’s largest single shareholder is Hungary’s oil and gas firm MOL which owns 49% of the company, with the Croatian government retaining a 44% stake. The company operates several offshore gas rigs in at least eight gas fields in the northern Adriatic.
Ivana D launched operations in January 2001, and the incident which sank the platform in 2020 was the first recorded incident of its kind.
According to INA’s press release, an Italian company called CNS was hired to shut down the drilling site and make the wreckage “permanently safe.”
This will include nearly 30 divers spending some two months working at a depth of 41 metres to secure the remains of the sunken oil platform and permanently seal off the drill shaft by pouring layers of concrete into it.
According to the plan, the wreckage of the sunken 500-tonne rig would be converted into an artificial underwater reef. Although it is not unusual for derelict rigs and ships to serve as artificial reefs providing a habitat for marine life, experts say this is normally done at depths of 50 metres or more.
“We chose a reliable and experienced contractor to perform the works required to abandon the site permanently. These will be done in line with Croatian laws and regulations and the industry’s best practices, which guarantees that the site will never pose any danger for humans or the environment,” the company’s Operating Director for Exploration and Production, Nikola Misetic, was quoted as saying.
However, Greenpeace Croatia issued a press release in response, questioning the decision’s legality and slamming the plan as “merely a cosmetic solution which allows INA to avoid its obligations,” which they say includes the complete removal of the wreckage.
Although INA claims that an automatically activated emergency shutdown has successfully prevented environmental damage or potential gas leakage into the open sea, environmentalist groups and at least some regulators remained unconvinced.
According to Greenpeace, at least three Croatian state agencies dealing with maritime affairs have issued opinions arguing for removing the sunken rig, citing “safety, human health, and protection of the marine environment” as key concerns.
INA does not seem to have received permission to leave the wreckage at the accident site, Greenpeace added. The group also voiced concern that the case of Ivana D might set a precedent for industrial-scale littering of the Adriatic seafloor.
“INA is arbitrarily offering quasi-solutions [for this problem] while at the same time announcing new drillings and new offshore rigs in the Adriatic Sea. We have to wonder whether all other platforms are destined to end up like this – to simply sink to the bottom of the Adriatic and then remain there until the end of time,” Greenpeace concluded.
(David Spaic-Kovacic | EURACTIV.hr)
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