The international environmental organizations Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) have filed a lawsuit with the Highest Court of Greece demanding the freezing of a large offshore storage and natural gas processing terminal project in the area of the Mediterranean port of Alexandroupolis.
The European Union-funded enterprise with a capacity of 5.5 billion cubic meters of regasification per year is planned to be put into operation in early 2024. To do this, a vessel with a length of almost 300 meters has already arrived at the Greek port, which was repaired in Singapore for 10 months.
In the lawsuit, environmentalists refer to legislation prohibiting the placement of such emergency facilities in protected areas of the Mediterranean. Here, off the coast of Greece, there are red book turtles, whales and dolphins, as well as colonies of seabirds.
The demands of international organizations were supported by Greek environmentalists: the Association for the Rescue of Turtles in the Mediterranean Sea, the Greek Society of Ornithologists and the Greek Society for the Protection of Nature.
However, given the upcoming New Year holidays, coupled with multimillion-dollar investments in the gas project, the initiative of environmentalists looks somewhat overdue.
The official portal "Wild Nature of Russia" reported that specialists from the Directorate of Biological Resources, Specially Protected Natural Areas and Natural Parks of the Ministry of Natural Resources of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), together with the Nizhnekolymsky Environmental Inspectorate with the support of Russian business, conducted an expedition in the Kolymsky Bay