TAP 'Confidant' as Trial Looms, Prepares to Replant Uprooted Trees

Vugar Veysalov, the head of exter­nal affairs for the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), told Olive Oil Times the com­pany would coop­er­ate dur­ing its upcom­ing trial and remained con­fi­dent it would be found not guilty on all counts.

Veysalov’s state­ment comes as the TAP pre­pares to face charges of unlaw­fully uproot­ing olive trees and caus­ing envi­ron­men­tal dam­age in Italy’s Puglia region.

“TAP is con­fi­dent in prov­ing the cor­rect­ness, under all points of view, of the con­duct of the com­pany and its man­agers,” he said.

Olive Oil Times requested an update on the sta­tus of the olive trees which TAP had uprooted to make way for the gas pipeline — an action that sparked wide­spread protests.

“In February TAP is due to start the replant­ing of the olive trees back to their orig­i­nal loca­tion, fol­low­ing an analy­sis con­firm­ing that they are still Xylella free,” Veysalov replied.

Photos pro­vided by the com­pany appear to show the remain­ing olive trees are in good con­di­tion.

Veysalov added that a total of 2,109 olive trees had been affected by the project and that 351 (16.6 per­cent) of the trees had been ​“pre­served on-site” while 1,189 (56.4 per­cent) had been tem­porar­ily relo­cated to a stor­age area.

According to Veysalov, 563 trees (26.7 per­cent) were destroyed after ​“com­pe­tent phy­tosan­i­tary author­i­ties” con­cluded they were infected with Xylella fas­tidiosa and six of the ill-fated trees (0.3 per­cent) were said to have ​“dried nat­u­rally” or ​“been destroyed by acci­dent.”

Veysalov reit­er­ated claims made by the com­pany in 2017 that the TAP project in Italy would impact around 2,100 olive trees. At that time the com­pany denied claims that up to 10,000 olive trees would be uprooted to make way for the con­tro­ver­sial gas pipeline.

The com­pany insisted that a max­i­mum of 2,300 olive trees had been ear­marked for removal — a cal­cu­la­tion based on 231 trees which stood in the pro­jec­t’s micro-tun­nel area plus a fur­ther 2,000 which lined the eight-kilo­me­ter (five-mile) route from the micro-tun­nel to the pipeline’s receiv­ing ter­mi­nal.

At that time a TAP spokesper­son con­ceded, ​“the 10,000 fig­ure is if we include the Snam sec­tion from the TAP pipeline receiv­ing ter­mi­nal to Brindisi.”

The com­pany was keen to point out their com­mit­ment to car­ing for the healthy olive trees and even­tu­ally return­ing them to their orig­i­nal sites.

“Being stored in the nurs­ery ensures that risk of infec­tion from the Xylella fas­tidiosa bac­terium, cur­rently threat­en­ing olive trees in Italy, can be pre­vented,” a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of TAP said.

Veysalov con­firmed that the loom­ing court case had not halted work on the pipeline. ​“Works onshore and off­shore con­tinue in line with the project sched­ule,” he said.

The pipeline’s con­struc­tion is report­edly on sched­ule. Veysalov added that 91 per­cent of the engi­neer­ing, pro­cure­ment and con­struc­tion phases had been com­pleted by the end of December 2019.

Ninety-nine per­cent of the pipes between Greece, Albania and Italy are in the ground and rein­state­ment along the route is 99 per­cent com­plete.