By Anthony O. Miller
COMMERCE Minister Nicos Rolandis and Larnaca Mayor George Lycourgos yesterday took the first step towards honouring an old government pledge to move the island’s oil refinery and storage facility out of the city and end decades of air pollution and eyesore.
“This time we mean business. It will happen,” Rolandis told the Cyprus Mail. “The moment we agree (on a timetable for the move), I shall personally supervise implementation.”
“The promises in the past were very vague. There was no memorandum, nothing of this sort. There was a vague promise by the Council of Ministers that the case will be studied… which doesn’t mean much, really,” he said.
Yesterday Rolandis and Lycourgous, representing the Larnaca Development Committee, agreed to prepare a memorandum specifying timetables for every step of the move, pending ratification by the Council of Ministers — which authorised Rolandis to open talks with the city in the first place.
“It’s a very major issue, with expenses running into hundreds of millions of pounds,” Rolandis said. “Whatever we do will be in excess of half a billion dollars.”
Before any actual move takes place, however, the government will invest some £40 million to upgrade the existing refinery to produce more unleaded petrol and low-sulphur diesel fuel, Rolandis said.
Since that investment must be recovered before the refinery and oil storage tank farm can be moved — or simply shut down and dismantled — Rolandis said he could not estimate when refining would cease there. But refining and storage at the Larnaca site will indeed cease, and may never be resumed on the island at all, he said.
Besides honouring its promise to Larnaca to move the refinery and oil storage tanks, Cyprus must also comply with EU rules requiring enlarging the tank farm from its current 100,000-ton capacity, to 500,000 tons. That would give the island a 90-day supply of oil — 300,000 tons for the oil refinery, and 200,000 tons for the electricity generating plant.
“We have an option,” to locate a new refinery and tank farm either on the island or “anywhere in the European Union,” Rolandis said.
“The directives of the European Union allow a member state to store the required quantities of petroleum products either within the national boundaries or outside the boundaries, as long as they are within the European Union. You can have them there permanently if you like,” he said.
For instance, he said, “there is a lot of storage space, from what I know, available in Rotterdam, and probably in Greece, as well… Everything will depend on rentals and of course how convenient it will be. Greece is nearer, of course, but that will be a decision to be taken after we reach agreement on this memorandum” setting out a timetable for all steps in the move.
While the Council of Ministers must ratify an eventual Rolandis-Lycourgos memorandum, “we are ready to proceed, the argument being: the city of Larnaca is now a tourist area, and it has been one of the very strong claims of the city and the district of Larnaca that those (oil) installations are hindering their development in the sphere of tourism.
“Inevitably, when you have a refinery, there is a degree of pollution. And tourists do not like to see tank farms, petrol stations and refineries around them. And, of course, it takes up a good part of the beach and the development area of the city,” he conceded.
Rolandis also said he hoped the House of Representatives would approve by the end of October a stack of regulations governing building several new marinas, so that the government can seek tenders early next year for their construction.
Rolandis’ plans call for erecting private marinas in Paphos (750 boats), Limassol (1,000 boats), Ayia Napa (600 boats), Protaras (270 boats). The Larnaca Marina would be privatised and upgraded to 1,050 berths, and the already-private San Rafael Marina would keep its 250 berths.
Rolandis estimates the Eastern Mediterranean is ringed with some 1,400 marinas, leaving Cyprus — which has only 600 berths now — competing for the yachting-tourism market with countries deeply invested in tens of thousands of individual berths.
