The choice of Trieste as a starting point for the Transalpine Pipeline was a deliberate move in the power play between the West and the USSR, for the city was a symbol of Cold War politics. In his famous speech of 1946, Winston Churchill proclaimed: ‘From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an “iron curtain” has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all . . . the populations . . . in what I must call the Soviet sphere.’1 According to the post–World War II peace treaty, the Free Territory of Trieste was to be run by the United Nations. As in Berlin, the Free Territory was divided into zones – Zone A to be administered by Anglo-American forces, Zone B by Yugoslavia. When, after seven years, the UN was still unable to agree on a governor, the Territory was abolished. Zone B became part of Yugoslavia, including the town of Capodistria/Koper, while Zone A was taken by Italy, including the city of Trieste and the town of Muggia.2
The sense of political tension is still clearly present in the pipeline’s geography: the heart of the TAL system, the vast SIOT tank farm, lies only 450 metres from the current border with Slovenia, which in 1967 was behind the Iron Curtain. If it seems curious that such a vital piece of infrastructure was placed so close to a potentially hostile power, the pipeline itself was an assertion that Trieste fell within the Western sphere. Its political role was similar to that played in Georgia by BTC and Baku–Supsa, which function as bridgeheads of Western power-projection.
Indeed, the Transalpine Pipeline, built forty years before BTC, in many ways prefigures it. Both projects ran across three states. Both were heavily influenced by the American State Department and the British Foreign Office. Both were owned by a consortium of companies, though BP was central to their commissioning. Both were in part designed by the same corporation, Bechtel. At its opening in June 1967, the 465 km Transalpine Pipeline was hailed as a heroic engineering achievement, travelling to altitudes greater than any pipeline had gone before.
Four decades later, TAL is still jointly owned by eight companies,3 though the membership of the original consortium has changed. Austria’s OMV oil company now owns the largest stake, with 25 per cent, while BP holds 14.5 per cent.4 The pipeline is operated by the Transalpine Pipeline Company, which has three different subsidiaries in the three countries, with SIOT the operator in Italy.
Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, TAL continues to hold geopolitical relevance, albeit in a radically different context. As SIOT’s general manager, Adriano Del Prete, notes, ‘TAL is a very important source of supply, because we cover 75% of the needs of Austria, 100% of Bavaria, 50% of Baden-Wurttemberg and 27% of the Czech Republic’s oil.’5 The precise origin of this crude changes from day to day, depending on the tankers that arrive in the Gulf of Trieste. In the year 2010, 30 per cent of TAL’s load had been brought to Muggia from the oilfields of North Africa, but over half of the tankers shipped crude from the states of the former Soviet Union. The vast majority of these came from Ceyhan.
The exact percentage of oil that comes from the Azeri–Chirag–Gunashli field offshore from Baku is always shifting, but the political significance of this trade route is constant. This oilfield was once part of the USSR. If its crude reached Central Europe in the 1960s, it did so via the Soviet Druzhba pipeline. Now this field is in Azerbaijan, and its crude is carried via pipelines and tankers that completely avoid the territory of Russia, just as intended by the Clinton administration and its servants, Sandy Berger and Richard Morningstar. TAL remains the jugular vein running to the heart of Central Europe, and the liquid it carries is still heavy with the political tensions between the West and Russia.
TAL KP 1 – 4,609 KM – SAN DORLIGO DELLA VALLE (DOLINA), ITALY
Marzia has kindly rung the public relations officer of SIOT. They have agreed that it might be possible for us to have an interview with the administrator, but a written and signed request would need to be delivered to the tank farm. So, weaving her Fiat through the traffic with speed and grace, Marzia takes us past the industrial zone, under the flyovers to the SIOT approach road. Beyond the sign that says ‘entrance is forbidden without work papers’, the grass verges have been clipped with precision. They are overshadowed by a high mesh fence topped with barbed wire and backed by a metre-wide tangle of razor-wire. We can see the great white bulk of the crude tanks, with their natty red trim. Each one has a large number painted on its side.
The guard in the entrance cabin peers through the slid-back glass, as Marzia proffers the fresh white envelope. He takes the letter, and it flops into a tray in a desultory manner. He looks at us with an expression that says ‘You’ll be lucky’, and there is a flash of anger in Marzia’s doleful eyes. We never receive a response. Our phone calls are not returned; an appointment cannot be fixed.
It is surprisingly difficult to find anybody in Trieste who will talk about the pipeline. Marzia had asked around persistently on our behalf, but was met with a resounding silence. Her partner Simone knew a man who worked at the terminal until recently, but he too refused to say anything unless we paid him ‘a lot of money’, because he thought he would be sued for talking. Then Simone hit on the idea of contacting Captain Bruno Volpi Lisjak, who lives in Slovenia. Bruno had spent his entire working life involved with the sea, from crewing cargo ships to the Port of London in the 1950s to being a pivotal figure in the docks of Trieste in the 1970s and 1980s. Now retired, he spends his time writing books on the history of Slovenian fishing.
The road to the Italian border takes us from one world to another: from the thronging city by the shore to the wide open, high plateau of the carso. This realm of limestone and underground rivers gave its name to a geological formation: karst landscape. The international border between these two EU states is now hardly marked, and the highway takes us speedily to Kriz. On the outskirts of the village is a newly built bungalow surrounded by a pristine vegetable patch. Bruno, who answers the door with his wife, is an energetic seventy-year-old. Together with Simone, we settle down for coffee.
When we mention TAL, he plunges straight into the history of Trieste itself. The city’s fate was decided at the Yalta Conference of 1945. Although Stalin was eager that it become part of the new Yugoslavia, Churchill was adamant that Trieste come under Western influence: the city, he felt, was vital in supplying Vienna, thereby ensuring that Austria was Western-aligned. To keep the citizens of Vienna warm, the harbour of Trieste was turned into a coal terminal for the railway that fed the Austrian capital, carrying fuel across the carso and the Alps. The dockside became a mountain of Welsh anthracite, but without the Atlantic drizzle to damp it down, black dust was blown across the city. The Triestini at their café tables on the piazzas grumbled about the British.
The docks of Trieste languished, shorn both of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that had given birth to them, and of Mussolini’s Empire that had briefly revivified them. Now Trieste was no longer on a great trade route but, like Berlin, was almost stranded on the fault-line between the West and the Soviet bloc. Perhaps the city would become a shadow, like Venice, but without her allure and beauty? This challenge was particularly acute for Bruno who, by the late 1960s, was the manager of the shipbuilding yards whose livelihood came from the construction and maintenance of vessels.
Bruno explains with delight how he solved the conundrum. In the 1960s the Soviet Union was experiencing its boom under Khrushchev. But, while the Black Sea merchant fleet quadrupled its tonnage, the Russians did not have adequate shipyards and dry docks to service their vessels. Without regular maintenance the ships were unable to meet the standards required for them to gain insurance from Lloyds of London.6 This one shipping insurer provided the internationally recognised certification that allowed merchant vessels from one state access to the ports of another state. While most of Europe skulked under an anti-Soviet embargo, Trieste threw open its arms to the USSR and the refitting of her ships. Soon vessels bearing the hammer and sickle on their funnels thronged to the Gulf of Trieste.
‘I have been to Baku. Twice.
To the Ministry of Oil and Gas’, Bruno tells us. He explains how, after the Soviets found oil in the depths of the Caspian during the 1970s, they wanted drill ships. They had ordered two such vessels from the French, but these needed spare parts which, under the West’s embargo, the USSR could not obtain. So the ships were brought to Trieste and repaired as Italian vessels, before making their way to the Caspian via the Don–Volga Canal. It was these drill ships, exploring off Baku, that worked the mammoth 26 Commissars oilfield, today called Azeri–Chirag–Gunashli.
Bruno’s analysis of the building of the SIOT oil terminal in the mid-1960s is precise and critical. Many people in Trieste were against it: ‘They knew about the ecology of the area and they could see what was coming.’ It was a political project driven by Rome and foreign governments, he says. ‘The oil companies worked as a cartel and lied about the positive effects it would have on the city. They claimed that the terminal would give many jobs, and that the crews of the tankers would come into town and buy things. But in fact they were cheating. From my experience as a seaman and a manager of a yard, I knew well that tankers at a terminal will only stay about twenty-four hours for discharging, that nobody from the crew would come into town, that even the sex-workers would not make a dollar.’
A shadow of sadness settles on Bruno’s face as he says, ‘I didn’t want to speak about this – but you pull out my tongue.’ Gently, he explains that for over 1,000 years this has been a Slavic area. The Slav villages just inland from the coast developed distinct traditions in order to fish on the harsh, rocky shores of the eastern Adriatic. ‘This region was 100 per cent Slovenian. It was the only place where Slovenes connected to the sea . . . and so they developed a particular culture.’
Bruno describes how, ever since the part of Istria that lies around Trieste was brought into Italy in 1919, the Italian state has been trying to displace the Slovenian population. The building of the oil terminal and the pipeline played a role in this process, for it would have made far more sense, logistically and economically, to send the tankers to the port of Monfalcone further to the north, at the very tip of the Adriatic. Monfalcone was better suited as an oil port than Muggia, far more sheltered from the bora. Choosing Muggia meant that the pipeline had to be buried in the carso, and many kilometres of solid rock had to be excavated. But selecting this route allowed the Italian state to expropriate the land of Slovenian farmers under the guise of a national project. He says the mayor of the Commune of Duino refused to agree to this plan, but was summoned to Rome and bullied until he signed the requisite papers. Many villages lost their connection to the sea: the distinct Slovenian fishing culture began to die with them.
The site for the SIOT tank farm was expropriated from the villages of Dolina and Bagnoli. The compound was built on the floor of the valley, on the flatter and well-watered land. In comparison, the small fields that the villages retained were on the carso, where the soil is poor and acidic. The land has to be backbreakingly cleared of rocks. It reminds us of how the best land at Gölovası, was taken by the Ceyhan Terminal.
Bruno explains that Rijeka is a good port for oil tankers because the water is deep. On the north-western side of Istria, however, the sea is shallow, so the shipping channels in the Gulf of Trieste and Vallone di Muggia have to be dredged. ‘When they built the terminal they brought excavators from Holland, and for two years they had to dig. At Porto San Rocco and Punta Ronco there were big fights with the fishermen as their fishing grounds were destroyed.’ Traditionally the Vallone had provided exceptional catches. Oysters were so prolific, and of such quality, that the Slovenian fishermen from the village of Servola, opposite Muggia, exported them to Vienna. When the Aquelina refinery was built in the 1930s, the seabed became polluted and was later dredged for the shipping channel.
This tale of a pipeline built forty years ago has many resonances with the BTC project. Here, too, the route was conceived in the ministries of distant powers – men in Washington and London in a struggle with Moscow. The states through which the pipeline would pass used the project to pursue ethnic and political agendas. And the oil companies pursued their own profit by playing off different sides against each other.
We have spent all morning with Bruno by the time he waves us goodbye from his vegtable garden: ‘I will be interested to see the politics of the book. You have to be careful of the oil companies . . . they have long arms, like the arms of an octopus. Now I want nothing to do with the world. I have my tomatoes and my cabbages.’
We drive back across the border into Italy and head to Dolina, stopping in the blistering sun near the church tower. Behind it is the small village square, dominated by a war memorial: a grey marble cenotaph topped with a red star, newly repainted. Hung from pegs are small discs of pale beechwood suspended on yellow ribbons. Carefully incised on each disc are the name and dates of one of the dead:
LJUBOMIR SANCIN 9.7.1919–18.3.1944
There are three rows of these discs, and every name is Slovenian. At the base of the cenotaph a couple of new laurel wreaths are swathed in red ribbons, each inscribed with gold lettering, with the word Communisti prominent. A poster pinned to a sheltering tree has a 1940s photo of a band of liberating motorcycle riders, with the title 25th APRIL ARRIVANO I PARTIGIANI. Someone has carefully added the Slovenian word, in broad red felt-tip: PARTIZANI.
The symbolism underscores what Bruno told us. Here, in Italy, is a Slovenian village determinedly loyal to its Yugoslav Communist roots. The war memorial looks out over the former lands of the community, now dominated by the white tanks of SIOT. Two tankers unload at the piers beyond. Far out in the blue sea of the Gulf of Trieste, another tanker waits its turn.
We walk down the hill, past neat vegetable patches of peas and onions, through the cool woods, onto the lower land strung with vines and ranks of young olive trees which run right up to the green mesh fence and the tangle of razor-wire that marks the perimeter of SIOT. The vineyards and olive groves seem to contest the land that was expropriated. Perhaps one day they will return to their former soil, or maybe the site will be left barren like the old refinery on the shore. Nightingales sing from the oak woods; a redstart chatters somewhere in the compound. Coming from Tank number 32 is the hum of an engine – the sound of its belly being filled with the crude from the ship in the bay.
4,612 KM – TRIESTE, ITALY
4. We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty, the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like the serpents of explosive breath – a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
11. We will sing of great crowds excited by work, by pleasure and by riot, we will sing of the vibrant fervour of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent electric moons, greedy railway stations that devour smoke-plumed serpents, factories hung on clouds by the crooked lines of their smoke, adventurous steamers that sniff the horizon, deep chested locomotives whose wheels paw the tracks like the hooves of enormous steel horses bridled by tubing, and the sleek flight of planes whose propellers chatter in the wind like banners and seem to cheer like an enthusiastic crowd.
Filippo Marinetti, Manifesto of Futurism, 19097
It was in Trieste that the poet Filippo Marinetti and his colleagues created the first Futurist Evening, on 10 January 1910. The event was held in the Politeama Rossetti, a vast theatre, in honour of General Assinari Di Bernezzo, who had recently caused a scandal by expressing irredentist views. To hold such an event in an Austrian city, as Trieste was then, was a deliberate provocation.
Marinetti gave a public proclamation of the Manifesto of Futurism. The packed audience listened as he celebrated the city as la nostra bella polveriera – ‘our beautiful powder-magazine’. Trieste, the Mediterranean port of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was a hotbed of irredentism – the Italian Nationalist movement that strove to bring the lands of Trieste, Istria, Fiume, Zadar and the Trentino into Italy.8 Modernity and the machine, a
s tools of liberation, were harnessed to the cause of nationalism, just as the Bolsheviks later harnessed them to Communism, and Atatürk harnessed them to the new Republic.
That first Futurist Evening ended exactly as the Futurists had hoped: in a mass brawl. A similar evening in Milan followed a month later: when Marinetti cried ‘Long live War! Sole hygiene of the World!’, the audience exploded with rage. Marinetti was arrested on stage. The next day, the Austrian and German consuls delivered formal protests to the Italian authorities.9
Sitting in a café on a narrow street overshadowed by the theatre, we talk of the Manifesto. Just as Captain Bruno Lisjak came to live in a world of irredentismo, it seems we find ourselves in the world that Marinetti and his colleagues hoped to bring about, whose lifeblood is oil. Coincidentally, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, now BP, was founded six weeks after the Futurist Manifesto’s publication on 20 February 1909. Marinetti’s ecstatic description of speeding cars and sleek aeroplanes prefigured the advertising posters of the oil companies. Many of the images created to sell fuel in the 1930s incorporated the style of Futurist paintings.
Before World War I, Trieste was a cradle of modernist thought, home to Freud, Joyce and Rilke. As one of the most industrially advanced metropolises in Europe at the time, it was also a mirror of Baku. So it is fitting that the most impressive Futurist-inspired event of all took place in that Caspian city: the performance of Avraamov’s Symphony of Factory Sirens on 7 November 1922, celebrating the fifth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.
TAL KP 30 – 4,637 KM – SISTIANA/SESLJAN, ITALY
We drive north out of the city to one of the villages up the coast, signposted by both its Italian and Slovenian names, Sistiana and Sesljan. At the wheel is Marzia, who explains that the man we are going to visit is the father of her good friend, Elena Gerebizza. Elena works for the Campagna per la Riforma della Banca Mondiale (CRBM), the Rome-based group that, since 2001, has played such a vigorous role in the coalition of NGOs raising issues about the BTC pipeline. Knowing that she was a Triestina, we had asked Elena for anything she could tell us about TAL. A while passed before she remembered that her father, Paolo, had worked on its construction.
The Oil Road Page 36
