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By Peter Popham in Rome

The Italian government has given approval for a liquefied natural gas terminal to be installed on a huge ship anchored 12 miles off the coast of Livorno, in Tuscany, in the middle of a whale and dolphin sanctuary.

The Cetaceans Sanctuary of the Mediterranean covers an area of about 100,000 square kilometres from the coast of Tuscany in Italy to Toulon in the south of France, and includes the whole of Corsica and the northern coast of Sardinia.

It was proposed as a sanctuary because the prevailing current, following the east-west curve of the coast, acts as a vortex, sucking up plankton and other cetacean food from deep in the Mediterranean, encouraging whales, dolphins and other sea mammals to converge on it. The sanctuary is home to all kinds of whales and dolphins, including striped dolphins, fin whales and sperm whales.

But now Italy proposes to build a huge floating plant inside the sanctuary which will take delivery of pressurised liquid natural gas from 40 or 50 tankers per year, bringing it from as far away as Nigeria. The floating terminal will use the natural heat of the sea-water to warm the liquid natural gas, which will then be pumped through a pipeline for distribution on land. To prevent the pipes bringing the sea-water on board from becoming clogged with limpets, mussels or algae, concentrated chlorine bleach will be added to the sea water, then jettisoned back into the sea at the end of the process.

The agreement to build the terminal was signed while Silvio Berlusconi was prime minister, but has since been confirmed by Romano Prodi's government. But local organisations in Livorno, the port closest to the site, have linked up with Greenpeace and are fighting furiously to get it stopped.

Beatrice Bardelli, a member of the Pisa-Livorno committee fighting the plan, said: "The terminal will be in a protected marine area of international importance, in the middle of a seismically active area, where very strong prevailing south-west winds blow; that will make it extremely hazardous for the transfer of LNG from one ship to another. In addition, thousands of tons of toxic mud were dumped on the sea floor decades ago and the constant movement of the anchors keeping the terminal in place, not to mention those of the 40 or 50 tankers arriving every year, would stir up this polluted mud and spread it around."

To get the plant approved, the area where the ship will be moored was reclassified as "an industrial site". Protesters say it is the first time part of the sea has been so defined anywhere in Europe, and sets an atrocious precedent for any industrialist hoping to dodge approval problems ashore by putting a polluting factory or other plant on a ship.

Alessandro Gianni, the director of marine campaigns at Greenpeace's office in Rome, said: "There is no legal procedure by which to classify an area of sea as an industrial site. They have simply fudged that question, declaring the area to be industrial. The transfer of LNG from ship to ship is, in any case, banned under Italian law because it is too dangerous. The gas is very cold, and if the pipe were to break and the gas to end in the sea there could be a very big explosion."

He also said that constant discharge of concentrated chlorine bleach is another hazard to the delicate marine environment and that discharges from the plant would be " a river of chlorine bleach going vertically down to the sea floor and killing everything in its path".

The city of Livorno, which is backing the scheme, has claimed that the Pilot Committee of the Cetaceans' Sanctuary had given a positive opinion on the question of the compatibility of the terminal with the sanctuary, in a place that has been defined by Italy's Environment Ministry as a protected marine area. But minutes of the pilot committee seen by The Independent indicate that only one member of the committee, Professor Giulio Relini, was in favour of it; the rest of the members merely "took note" of his opinion.

Another document showed that Professor Relini had been commissioned by the company behind the terminal plan – Offshore LNG Toscana (OLT) – to brief the committee on his technical opinion.

The managing director of OLT is Paola Marini, who is married to Aldo Belleli, an entrepreneur claimed by the Pisa-Livorno Committee to be the prime mover behind the scheme. Mr Belleli was banned from holding office in a public company in 2003, after being convicted of fraudulent bankruptcy in a case in which 1,500bn lire (€775m) disappeared.

He was sentenced to three years in jail. In 1995, he was also convicted of corruption during the "Mani Pulite" ("Clean Hands" ) bribery scandal that toppled Italy's political establishment 15 years ago.

The terminal plan has been given the go-ahead by two Italian governments, but opponents are hoping to persuade the coast guard and/or the Livorno port authority to block it. They have also launched 11 legal cases challenging the proposal.

Source - The Independent, UK