Saving Taman!
Saving Taman! is a local environmental organization based on the Taman Peninsula. It was created in 2007 and its members work to protect the Taman Peninsula from industrial development that is threatening the local way of life. Saving Taman! has members from the many towns and villages on the Taman Peninsula, and has been working to ensure environmental and social protections are in place for local residents as increased industrial development pushes towards Taman.
Environmental Watch on the North Caucasus
Environmental Watch on the North Caucasus (EWNC) is an environmental organization whose mission is to preserve wild nature and restore a healthy environment to the North Caucasus. Its priorities include biological conservation, public control over the development of environmentally dangerous projects, facilitating communication within the environmental movement and disseminating environmentally significant information. EWNC has been active on the Taman Peninsula since the 1990s and works closely with local activists. EWNC has actively campaigned against a number of large scale Russian oil and gas projects including the CPC and Blue Stream pipelines.
EWNC was founded in 1997 by a group of activists from the Krasnodar and Adygei branches of the Socio-Ecological Union (SEU) and is the leading organization of the SEU in the West Caucasus. Andrey Rudomakha is the Coordinator of EWNC; Dmitry Kaptsov is Vice Coordinator. The organization has thirty-four members.
The Company
Tamanneftegas is the company operating at Russkiy Mir. However, although Tamanneftegas is officially a Russian company, its main operator is the Dutch company, Malmros Continental Property Company BV. Also active at Russkiy Mir is the United Transport – Forwarding Company” (“OTEKO”), a management company for the rail tank car fleets of the largest independently owned Russian rail transport companies – JSC SFAT and JSC Russkiy Mir, both of whom have each been active in the oil transportation market for more than ten years. The Russkiy Mir Oil and Gas Terminal, which is under construction and has received financing from the IFC, is the first terminal to be constructed on the Taman Peninsula. Local residents fear that its completion, along with the refurbishment of a railroad through the middle of the peninsula (also part of the IFC-financed project), which will bring oil and gas to the terminal for transport via tanker across the Black Sea and to the Bosphorus Strait, will literally and figuratively pave the way for other terminals to be constructed with relative ease. Local residents are extremely concerned that their way of life, their environment and their economy will be destroyed by the construction of the Russkiy Mir and other oil terminals on the peninsula.
The Financing
Russkiy Mir is a project of Tamanneftegas, a Russian oil company with investments from the IFC. Tamanneftegas is wholly owned by Malmros Continental Property Company, B.V., which is incorporated in the Netherlands., although it operates an office in Moscow. According to the IFC, as of 2005, the project costs are estimated at $264 million, and the IFC investments are $115 million, which were provided in two loans. The first loan, provided in 2003, was for $15 million to purchase rail cars and related equipment. The second loan, provided in 2005, is financing the construction of the terminal itself as well as railway, equipment and infrastructure financing. The IFC has designated the loan as a Category B loan to the warehousing and transportation sector.