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Ecological safety and the risks of hydrocarbon transportation in the Baltic Sea

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Abstract

The book by (2002) stimulated our interest in the problem of environmental change in the Baltic Sea. The Baltic Sea in the 21st century is under the increasing influence of anthropogenic factors, and in particular those connected with the growth in the transport of hydrocarbons from newly constructed ports in the Gulf of Finland (each with a throughput capacity for oil of up to 60 Mt) and with the start of the construction of the land part of the North European Gas Pipeline (NEGP, also known as the “Nord Stream”), which then goes through the bottom of Portovaya Bay near Vyborg (Russia) to Greifswald (Germany) with the throughput capacity of 55×109 m3 per hour and then on land to the Netherlands. The whole length of the NEGP is going to be almost 2.500 km, with the undersea part of the pipeline accounting for 1,200 km. It is being planned to extend one of its branches to the coast of England after 2010. Nowadays oil and natural gas meet more than 60% of the world’s energy needs, but if they escape into the environment during extraction. transportation, processing, and storage, they have a negative impact on ecosystems. Thus, of the numerous anthropogenic factors that have bad effects on the environment oil takes the leading place, owing to the fact that it can escape into the environment during extraction, transportation, processing, storage, its actual use, and of course as a result of accidental oilspills. Oil consists of at least 1,000 (according to some sources of information more than 2,000) individual substances, most of which are poisonous for the overwhelming majority of animal organisms.

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© 2009 Praxis Publishing Ltd, Chichester, UK

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Binenko, V.I., Berkovits, A. (2009). Ecological safety and the risks of hydrocarbon transportation in the Baltic Sea. In: Global Climatology and Ecodynamics. Springer Praxis Books. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-78209-4_13

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