The Oil Road

by James Marriott

  Like many of the fishermen, Ahmet faces fines and penalties for arbitrary violations of new regulations. He recently received an 850 lira fine and was sentenced to three months in prison for a breach he does not understand. He managed to get released on probation, but had to pay an additional fee. ‘We obey the Red Zone. But even in the permitted areas, the coastguard comes and finds stupid violations, especially on our qualifications. No one else is allowed on the boats, not family members or guests. If someone is sick, he can’t send his friend out instead.’

  Continuing to fish here is an act of resistance in itself. The state is criminalising the Gölovası residents’ very way of life, but they have refused to give up and leave. ‘The company and coastguard behave in our land as if we don’t exist. But even if we get sent to prison for three months, when we come out, we head straight back to the boats.’

  As we talk, one of the tankers moves towards the terminal. We can make out its name, Dugi Otok. Some 40 metres wide and 250 long, it looms over the fishing boats, which bob in its wake. Guided to the pier by three tugs, this giant will collect 80,000 tonnes of Azeri crude. Two vans drive down the long, thin jetty. It takes them almost five minutes to reach the ship at the end.

  As the families finish extracting the shrimp, the catch is carried ashore in buckets and bought by waiting traders, who will sell it on to restaurants in the nearby cities of Adana and İskenderun. The empty nets are cleaned and folded neatly, ready for the next fishing trip.

  Leaving the harbour, we return to Upper Gölovası to resume our conversation with Tahsin. We find him in the middle of the village under a tree, among men playing backgammon. In a nearby shed, an older man with enormous eyebrows is making çay, Turkish tea.

  Tahsin warns about what the coming industrialisation of the area will bring. ‘The companies and government plan to make the bay into the Rotterdam of the Mediterranean. But Rotterdam cannot coexist with a fishing village like Gölovası.’ In Ankara, Şükran told us that the region had been designated a ‘special energy zone’ in which an array of refineries and power plants would be built. Tahsin believes the fishermen are harassed this much because the authorities want to make life so hard that the villagers leave. ‘We want the people who supported the pipeline, the politicians, the Scottish bank that paid for it – we want them to come and speak to us directly, to see what it is doing to our lives. They paid hundreds of millions for this, and never even came.’

  Tahsin shouts across to the shed for a second round of tea, making a joke about foreigners drinking very slowly. He laughs at how one of the BP people took an hour to finish his cup.

  ‘BTC paid so much money to send university people to do studies and to ask us questions, and then nothing happens.’ His words make us think of Mehmet Ali’s friends at METU and Şükran’s endeavours. He says the company has never informed them about what to do if there is an oil spill in the bay. ‘Anyway, in twenty years, Gölovası will be an empty village. There is barely any sea left for fishing, and the sea gives life to our village.’

  Just along the coast from Gölovası harbour lies Balık Restoran – the fish restaurant at the end of the pipeline. The only structure on the beach, it has been serving visitors from Adana, Ceyhan and İskenderun for many years. The tables, in the open air, are of the ubiquitous design in white plastic, the entertainment is nonexistent and the access road is full of potholes. Balık’s attraction has always been a combination of the local fish and its setting, amid palm trees, looking out onto the Mediterranean. Now, however, the scenery includes a long oil pier to the north, waiting oil tankers due east, and the German-built Isken coal-fired power station to the south. Nor is the fish catch of Gölovası any longer what it used to be.

  We select our own shrimp – possibly the same ones we removed from the nets earlier – as Kemal, the young waiter in blue jeans and white shirt, talks about the further development planned for the beach. The construction of BP’s terminal has already spawned a series of nearby industrial projects. Expansion plans for the short strip of coast between the BTC pier and the existing power station include five new coal-fired plants, a chemical works and a loading site for the proposed Samsun–Ceyhan oil pipeline.

  As he lays out a tablecloth, Kemal remarks: ‘All this industry – it destroys our health, the wheat fields, the fish. Then they give us bus shelters, and expect us to be thankful.’

  Disappearing into the restaurant, he returns with shrimp sizzling in peppers and garlic, a tomato salad and toasted flatbread. While the terminal was under construction, workers, including many foreigners, came to eat here. But no longer. The fall in clientele has run in parallel with the drop in the fish catch.

  ‘We have the best fish and shrimp, but now there are almost none left.’ When we ask what Kemal thinks his village will be like in fifteen years, the answer is short: ‘Dead. The whole area will be dead. For people, farming, fishing.’ His words echo the fate of the Caspian fishing village of Sumqayit.

  BURNAZ, TURKEY

  Despite the gloom about what the future holds, not all the people of the Çukurova are sitting by and watching as their sea, beaches and fields disappear under industry and concrete.

  People have learned from the nearby experiences of BTC and the Isken coal plant that battles must be fought early on. New projects need to be challenged before they are approved, financed and planned on hard drives and flipcharts in far-off capitals. Just a few kilometres north-east of the BTC terminal, local residents have been protesting since 2009, sticking up campaigning posters and disrupting corporate presentations. They are hoping to prevent the construction of five new coal-fired power plants, totalling 4,700 megawatts of output, which will be sited on a four-kilometre stretch of coast beside some of the Çukurova’s finest orange groves. Fifteen such plants have been proposed for the region as a whole.

  From Gölovası we drive to the beach at Burnaz to join a march. A crowd of perhaps 1,000 children and adults are gathered to oppose the complete transformation of their home. Their colourful banners proclaim: ‘No industrialization of our coast’, ‘Protect the Çukurova’ and ‘Don’t Sleep – Save your Sea’. Children play in the water; offshore, nine tankers lurk, waiting to grab their oil loads. With drums and zurna instruments playing in the background, a local resident and member of the teachers’ union, Eğitim Sen, stands up to say, ‘This is the result of capitalism and consumer culture. We are the people. If we don’t stop our resistance, they can’t build it. The company will say they are giving jobs and money, so you shouldn’t go to the protests. But at the Isken coal plant, there were 300 jobs during construction. Now there are only ten for locals.’

  Mehmet Ali smiles and lets the warm water roll over his toes as he translates the speech. ‘This is the struggle of life. If we want to live on our bay in peace, we need to fight for it.’

  1,983 KM – YUMURTALIK, TURKEY

  On the sea-coast there is a city named Laiassus, a place of considerable traffic. Its port is frequented by merchants from Venice, Genoa and many other places, who trade in spiceries and drugs of different sorts, manufactures of silk and of wool, and other rich commodities. Those persons who design to travel into the interior of the Levant, usually proceed in the first instance to this port of Laiassus.

  The Travels of Marco Polo, 12716

  Fifteen kilometres south of Gölovasi, the ruins of a sea fortress mark the former Venetian presence in Yumurtalık. Today this town lives from fishing and tourism, but 700 years ago it was the major port of Laiazzo, also known as Ayas. Here sea-based trading routes to the West met overland routes to the East, allowing goods to be shipped from what is now Beijing to Venice and back. Marco Polo disembarked here before heading inland to Kayseri, Sivas, Erzincan and then the Caspian.

  In the thirteenth and fourteenth century, the Çukurova and the Taurus Mountains behind it were the territory of the small Armenian kingdom of Cilicia. Strongly allied to Western Christendom, it allowed the Venetians to establish a trading base at Laiazzo. S
ilk and spices from India and China crossed the Persian Gulf and the Central Asian steppes, before reaching this fortified harbour in the north-east corner of the Mediterranean.

  Although the geography of the ‘Silk Road’ echoes that of the Oil Road, the terms of trade were utterly different. What is shipped from the BTC terminal is a raw commodity in bulk, extracted from weaker nations and transported to the most powerful. By contrast the medieval ships bore small amounts of manufactured goods of the highest value, purchased by traders in the cities of the immense and powerful Mongol Empire and carried to the puny states of Western Europe. However, this highly profitable trade in luxuries was of local strategic importance, and Laiazzo became a site of struggle between Venice and its rival maritime republic of Genoa.

  After the fall of Acre to the Mamluk Egyptians in 1291, and their subsequent conquest of all the Crusader ports, the Pope forbade trade with this expanding Muslim empire. The importance of Laiazzo grew, and it became the main terminus for the Venetian fleets and merchants that went to ‘beyond the sea’. In 1294 a Genoese war party was dispatched to break Venice’s dominance in the eastern Mediterranean. The ensuing battle saw fifty galleys clash.

  Nicolò Spinola, the Genoese commander, arrived before the main Venetian fleet and captured the harbour of Laiazzo. Reading the likely wind-shifts of the day, he lashed his ships together to make a great floating fortress. Soon twenty-eight vessels from Venice, under Commodore Marco Basegio, bore down upon them. As the fleets drew nearer, a rising headwind caught the Venetian sails, turning their ships broadside to the Genoese galleys and exposing them to their guns. All but three of the Venetian ships were captured with rich cargoes. Thus the Genoese began this new war with a signal victory.

  Laiazzo’s fortifications are now ruins. Today’s marine skirmishes are played out between the fishermen of Yumurtalık and the Turkish coastguard. There had long been a cooperative relationship between these two parties, but when a new and larger coastguard station was constructed inside the BTC complex, conflict began, with intrusive checks and a sudden increase in the scale of fines.

  We make our way with Mehmet Ali to the fisherman’s café a few metres from the boats in the harbour. Sinan and Mose, two of the most vocal members of the local fishing cooperative, explain that the coastguard now has four brand-new Zodiac inflatables which can easily outrun the slow fishing boats. They believe that BTC Co. supplied the Zodiacs, as well as regular petrol, food and cash payments. With thick eyebrows, a small moustache and round beard, Sinan looks the part of a jovial grandfather, and it is sad to see him so hurt.

  We have come to the café beneath the fortress walls to witness a battle of words. Gathered on plastic chairs are forty-two fishermen, five coastguards in pressed white uniforms, a BOTAŞ official from the terminal, the three of us, three boys on bikes and a pet pelican making honking noises. As the head of the coastguard, in a pristine suit, begins an opening speech. Mehmet Ali whispers: ‘He looks surprisingly like John Travolta, no?’

  Coastguard: You must not hunt seals or turtles. This is not good, they are not to be hunted. You should stick to fish.

  Mose: We don’t hunt those animals – we don’t even have the tools to catch them. But why do you give us such high fines for minor offences – our fines are not like traffic fines, they are much higher.

  Fisherman 1: I went out fishing with three guys. They said they had papers. When the coastguard stopped us, it turned out they did have papers, but not the right ones for this type of fishing. I was fined, even though the others said it was their fault.

  Pelican (jumping on to a parked moped): Honk, honk, honk.

  Fisherman 2: You are always stopping us for silly things, and punishing us. Can the fines not be a bit flexible?

  Coastguard (impatiently tapping his shiny black shoes): If we did that, the coastguard would become corrupt and you don’t want that. I have a book in front of me, and it tells me what I need to do – that’s how I do things.

  Mose: Before BTC, there was nothing like this. It started with BTC.

  Coastguard: Life changes.

  Sinan: We need bread to feed our families.

  Coastguard: This oil project is very important for our country.

  Pelican (jumping off moped, walking between chairs and sitting under table near coastguard, to watch his still tapping shoes): Honk, honk, honk, honk.

  Mose: We have many complaints against BTC and BOTAŞ.

  Coastguard: We have lots of other things to do – we barely deal with you.

  Fisherman 3: That’s not possible – you hassle us every single day. The fines are very high and written into our criminal records. This makes it harder to get other work.

  Coastguard: No they aren’t.

  Fisherman 3: Yes they are, and they know if you have sent us to prison.

  Coastguard: Ow! (The pelican has tried to bite the coastguard’s shiny black shoes.)

  Sinan (with a smile): Bad pelican, come here.

  BOTAŞ official: You’re all so lousy – why can’t you fish properly, without breaking the rules? You’re just trying to have an easy ride by being corrupt.

  Mose: We’re fishermen, running small businesses. Operating with such high levels of punishment is very hard.

  Coastguard: When we join the EU, there’ll be an EU coastguard here as well, enforcing these rules even more.

  Fisherman 4: Great! You’re already more than enough.

  After the meeting and more tea, Sinan leaves us with these parting words: ‘I have been a fisherman my whole life. We lived from the sea. We used these boats to collect fish, to eat and to trade. But now we don’t catch anything anymore. Oil tankers have caused much damage. The seabed is mouldy. The sea has turned its back on us, because of human behaviour.’

  Our requests to visit the terminal at Ceyhan were turned down. Unlike near Baku, there is no ‘Energy Visitor Centre’ here, in an obscure corner of Turkey far from the capital. So we make do with the photographs in the BTC commemorative album that Orxan Abasov had given us when we met at Sangachal. There is an image of the heart of the Ceyhan complex, the Control Room. Four men stare at computer screens, and on the wall there is a line of synchronised clocks with names written beneath them – Baku, Tbilisi, Ceyhan, London – like the conference room at Villa Petrolea.

  In May 2006 it was in this Control Room, and its counterpart in Sangachal, that engineers finally assessed that the pipeline was operational. Once construction was complete in all those places we have passed through – Qarabork, Tsikhisdvari, Çalabaş, Yaylacı – the steel tube was filled with Caspian crude. Michael Townshend, head of BTC Co., was in Ceyhan. With the task done, he and some colleagues dived into the warm sea – a ‘cleansing moment’ he had long dreamed of. Later he said, ‘You actually know when it’s all done when you see that physical tanker at the other end, and it’s not until that moment you can say that it is all done.’7

  We look at a second photo in the album. Two men in orange jumpsuits lean on a rail and stare out to sea at three tugs, the end of the Ceyhan oil jetty and the stern of the BP tanker British Hawthorn. It is Sunday, 4 June 2006. One of the men is Tony Hayward, head of BP Expro, come to witness the departure of the first tanker of Azeri crude, bound for Italy.

  Forty days later BP CEO John Browne was here. He described the event in his autobiography:

  13 July 2006: One of the great moments of my career was to be part of the official inauguration of the Ceyhan marine export terminal and BTC pipeline. It was a hot, sunny, clear day on the coast of the Mediterranean. You could see as far as Syria. The heads of the three ‘pipeline countries’ were there with me: Ahmet Necdet Sezer, President of Turkey; Ilham Aliyev, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan; and Mikheil Saakashvili, President of Georgia.

  In my speech I commented not only on the heroic engineering achievements but also on the strategic significance: ‘The commissioning of the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline is a significant step in the long history of the oil industry. It reintegr
ates significant oil supplies from the Caspian into the global market for the first time in a century.’8

  The new Oil Road was in operation.

  Part III THE SHIP

  MAP IV THE MEDITERRANEAN

  17 MILITARY FORCES SANITISE THE AREA AHEAD OF THE MERCHANT SHIPS

  YUMURTALIK, TURKEY

  At Yumurtalık we find our onward travel plans blocked. We have been trying to organise a journey on one of the tankers that ply the waters between the Ceyhan Terminal and Muggia, near Trieste in Italy, but it appears that for us that is impossible. Whereas some shipping lines will allow tourists on container ships – and we have crossed the Atlantic this way several times – oil tankers are another matter. It seems that, as ordinary citizens, we cannot easily travel on a ship with such a dangerous cargo, just as we would not get a cabin on a warship. Signing up as crew is also not an option: most are recruited in the Philippines, training is arduous, and the shortest contract would run for several months. Indeed, even meeting the crew of one of the tankers loading with Azeri crude is difficult, with the jetty cocooned within the perimeter fence of the terminal. Once again, we have found a ‘forbidden zone’, like the Control Room at Sangachal.