In Piombino there is another election campaign – Angelo Mastrandrea

On the eastern quay of the northern dock of the port of Piombino, everything is at a standstill awaiting the arrival of the Golar Tundra, the first of the two regasification vessels purchased by the Italian pipeline company (Snam) to diversify gas supplies and reduce dependence on Russia. On the afternoon of 5 September, the government and the Tuscany region reached an agreement on the installation and the company’s technicians are grappling with surveys and inspections.

Ministers Stefano Cingolani and Mariastella Gelmini, the president of Tuscany Eugenio Giani, the managing director of Snam Stefano Venier and government consultants Antonio Funiciello and Francesco Giavazzi attended the meeting, which took place at the ministry of ecological transition in Rome. During the meeting, the ministry’s statement reads, “the imperative need to install the regasifier in the Piombino area was discussed, to ensure national energy security within the time limits established by the government plan”.

The LNG carrier, produced in Norway but flying the flag of the Marshall Islands, built in 2015 and purchased by Snam for 320 million euros from Golar Lng, a company based in the Bermuda Islands, is 293 meters long and 43 wide. storage of approximately 170 thousand cubic meters of liquefied natural gas and will be able to regasify five billion cubic meters of gas per year, which will be added to the 3.75 of the Livorno offshore plant, to the 3.5 of that of Panigaglia in La Spezia, the only one in Italy on the mainland, at 8 of the platform in the sea of ​​Porto Vigo in Veneto and to the five of the second ship purchased by the Italian government, the Bw Singapore, which will be anchored eight kilometers off Ravenna.

According to Stefano Venier, the platform “alone will be able to contribute to about 6.5 per cent of the national demand, bringing the Italian regasification capacity to over 25 per cent of demand”. The vessel will be connected to the methane network through an eight kilometer long pipeline and will remain in the port for three years, the time to build a pipeline that will allow it to be moved to the open sea.

This is the compromise reached in the face of the protests of the four city committees that have taken to the streets in Piombino since May to say no to a project that, according to them, jeopardizes the safety of the inhabitants, the workers of the port and the thousands of tourists who they crowd it every day, as well as the entire city economy. The president of Toscana Giani, of the Democratic Party, appointed by the Draghi government as commissioner for regasification plants, is expected to sign the final authorization for construction by the end of October. The government has foreseen an emergency procedure which does not include an environmental impact assessment and seeks to speed up the completion times.

In a report delivered to the municipal administration, Snam writes that “the location of the regasification plant in Piombino was decided, in agreement with the institutions, following investigations that identified the locality as the only one able to ensure, for reasons techniques (draft of the seabed, length of the quay and proximity to the transport network), the entry into operation of the terminal in times compatible with the current energy criticality “.

In Piombino it is hard to find someone in favor of the arrival of the Golar Tundra. The president of the Port System Authority of the Northern Tyrrhenian Sea, Luciano Guerrieri, argued that occupying the port with a giant ship full of gas is equivalent to blocking it and stopping “any attempt to relaunch”, also risking to cause an employment crisis. The basic union union (USB) wrote in a note that the arrival of the Golar Tundra “would be a shock for the whole city” and “would stop industrial reconversion”. Fishermen fear damage to their business, even when the plant is moved offshore, in the Gulf of Follonica, as required by the agreement between the government and the region.

The flags of all parties, from the Italian Left to the 5 Star Movement, fly to the demonstrations that have followed one another at a regular pace since last May 6, the Minister of Ecological Transition Stefano Cingolani announced that the ship would be moored in the Tuscan port. , “Except those of the Democratic Party,” says more than one through gritted teeth. With the exception of the Democratic Party and the so-called third pole, all the local political forces support the battle against the regasifier.

The local right, including the parties that voted in favor of the decree providing for the purchase of regasifiers, is riding the protest. Along the main street of the city, a Lega banquet displays a sign against the regasifier, regardless of the declarations of its secretary Matteo Salvini, for which “Italy needs regasifiers, if it is more right to do it there or there, not I have the technical skills to say it “.

Mayor Francesco Ferrari, of Fratelli d’Italia, says he is opposed to “a new sacrifice for a city that has already given a lot”, makes it known that he is ready not to sign the authorizations and also to appeal to the courts, and postpones any decision on when the new government will be appointed. The right does not want to lose the consensus it gained in 2019, when it tore the municipality from the left after seventy years, exploiting the disappointment of the dismissal of the steel mills.

Eight thousand people worked in the plant, which became ten thousand with the related industries. In 2014 the blast furnace was turned off and never restarted. The last owners, the Indian company Jindal, have reduced them to about two thousand. Of these, 500 alternate in cold working, largely for a rail order for the State Railways. The others are on layoffs. A piece of the city has survived for years thanks to the social safety nets and to pay the price of deindustralization until now it has been the left, which until the institutional earthquake three years ago won the elections without even going to the ballot. Now, it risks being penalized even by the yes to the regasification terminal, despite the support for the latter, outside the city limits, is transversal.

In reality, even the right risks paying the price of a fighting position in Piombino and realpolitik outside the city limits. The leader of the Brothers of Italy Giorgia Meloni has already hinted that the Golar Tundra will be moored in the port and at most it will discuss how and how much to compensate the city. “If there is a way to build a regasification plant not in Piombino, which is a city that has already paid a lot for the absence of reclamation, it would be better, but if there are no alternatives, we will have to talk very seriously about the role of the municipality and compensation, ”he told the TV show Out of the Choir, on Rete4.

A position very similar to that of Commissioner Giani, of the Democratic Party, who presented to the government a memorandum with a package of six hundred million euros which provides, as compensation for the regasification plant, works at the port, the reclamation of abandoned industrial areas, to tourism and fish farms, research projects, roads and calm bills for those who invest in the steel industry, replacing the old coal blast furnace with an electric furnace.

“They are passing us off as compensations for the works we have been waiting for for decades,” says Fabrizio Callaioli, leader of the Communist Refoundation in the city council. To demonstrate that the battle against the regasification terminal is not a question of nimby, English acronym for not in my backyard, not in my garden, Callaioli is keen to show closely the impact that the regasifier will have on the port and on the entire city. He points to the stretch of water where the Golar Tundra will be anchored to the seabed, forcing a stretch of the imagination.

On the quay “they could have put all the operations of the maritime industry, starting with the maintenance of the boats,” explains Callaioli. Instead, the ship will occupy the entire area and the entire area will be off-limits for safety reasons. A few tens of meters away, on the mainland, there is a hydrogen deposit which in the event of an accident would risk being involved. The first houses are about 500 meters away, a distance that, if there were an explosion, would not be sufficient to guarantee safety. Behind there are the steel mills with the mining parks to be reclaimed. It is from there that the gas pipes will have to pass, with the risk of raising the toxic dust accumulated in one hundred and twenty years of steel industry. “How will the safety of these residues, which reach a height of seven meters, be managed?” Asks Callaioli.

The comparison with the offshore platform of nearby Livorno, however, highlights the risks associated with the presence of a huge gas container in a small port like that of Piombino. In Livorno the ship was anchored to the seabed 22 kilometers from the coast and it is forbidden to sail and fish within a radius of three nautical miles around the regasification terminal. In Piombino, however, the ferries arriving from the island of Elba, Sardinia and Corsica will pass a few meters from the Golar Tundra.

The committees fear in particular the days when the sirocco wind ripples the sea and creates currents that could create dangerous collisions, especially during the refueling operations of liquid natural gas, which will arrive by ship from Spain. Hoteliers and traders fear a collapse in tourism. It would be a fatal blow for a city that thought it could overcome its industrial past by focusing on vacationers passing through the islands.

In 2021 2.8 million people, 12,603 ​​ships, 82 thousand trucks shipped by sea and 4.2 million tons of goods passed through the port of Piombino. It would be enough if they stayed more than a day in the alleys of the historic center to raise the gross domestic product of the town. This is why it is difficult to find a shop that has not displayed a sign against the regasification plant in the window. “It will end up that, due to safety problems, they will move all departures to Livorno”, says the owner of a hotel.

“Nobody will gain from the regasification plant, except for the private company that manages the quay,” says Callaioli. On the contrary, he continues, the tourist industry, bathing establishments and mussel and other fish farms will be penalized, which will have to deal with the chlorine spilled into the sea by the plant, up to fifty kilograms per day which, according to WWF environmentalists risk destroying the marine ecosystem for a few kilometers. “A serious and complete study will have to be carried out on the effects of the release of chlorine and any other substances in the production cycle of the regasifier and any variations in the temperature of the sea waters”, explain the ecologists. In Piombino, people think that at best they can save on gas bills. But in return he will have to give up fish.