The chairman of the commission and senior official at the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Zoning and Construction, Nenad Mikulic, said that the commission would draw up questions which the study was found to be lacking.
He said that groups would be formed within the commission to deal with specific questions of environmental protection and that the relevant documentation would be completed, after which the ministry would decide on a further course of action.
Most objections to the study refer to failure to cover the consequences of ballast waters, inert gasses (which are used in tankers to prevent explosions and which are released before oil is loaded onto tankers) and the issue of how much increased oil transport increases related risks in comparison to the existing situation. Around 50 pages of the study which are considered a state secret will probably be left out from the documentation, while those referring to the Adriatic Pipeline (JANAF) business secret remain to be considered, Mikulic said.
Vjeran Pirsic, head of the Eko-Kvarner environmental protection NGO, which has led activities against the project, told reporters that the study could not be amended and that it should be rejected, along with the Druzba Adria project.
Today, on the last day of its first session, the commission discussed the section of the study referring to risks and social and economic issues related to the project. The project is expected to yield 273 million dollars in ten years' time, with tax revenue accounting for 46 million, said Darko Tipuric of Zagreb's Faculty of Economics.
Commenting on this section of the study, Zeljka Kordej-De Villa of the Zagreb Institute of Economics said that Croatia's annual tourist revenue totalled six billion dollars and that its fish exports amounted to 61 million dollars, while the Druzba Adria project would have a negative effect on both sources of income. She added that the study covered only the first phase of the project referring to the transport of five million tonnes of oil annually and that it failed to cover other phases envisaging the transport of 10 and 15 million tonnes of oil annually.
The agreement on the Druzba Adria project, which was signed by the previous government, envisages the transport of oil from Russia via six countries to the port of Omisalj on the northern Adriatic island of Krk. The 1,500-page study on the environmental effects of the project was drawn up by the Zagreb Faculty of Mining, Geology and Petroleum Engineering and the Oceanography Institute from Split.