While CINS interlocutors say that the poor quality of drinking water is largely facilitated by oil and gas wells that “sprout” every year in this part of Serbia, there is still no clear strategy on how to manage these wells in relation to groundwater.
March last year in Serbia marked the beginning of the corona virus epidemic. However, for the residents of Ludoska Street in Palic, it was the beginning of another type of catastrophe – a heavy oil extraction machine “settled” in their neighborhood. Trucks, cranes, caterpillars and a high construction for drilling the ground are only a hundred meters from the house of the Mikovic family.
There, the Oil Industry of Serbia (NIS) made several test oil wells with the idea of investigating whether there is oil and gas in the country that would be extracted later.
Last year, drilling and now the rumble of trucks, as Zoltan Mikovic says, cause noise while transporting oil every day. In addition to cracking the walls in their house, he noticed another problem. Drinking water has not been the same since then.
“The water becomes cloudy and starts to smell. Not only with us, but also with others,” says Mikovic.
Petar Pizurica, executive director for the production department of JP Vodovod i kanalizacija from Subotica, a company responsible for water quality control in Palic, among other places, claims that they performed the analysis in two Palic wells before and after the wells were formed. He claims that there was no change in water quality.
“In principle, this drilling did not damage our water intake layers from which we take water,” Pizurica told the Center for Investigative Journalism of Serbia (CINS), but did not submit the results of the analysis.
However, Mikovic, who plans to move from there due to the whole situation with his family, just as was the case with several neighbors from the street, claims that no analysis was done with him. He explains that each of the residents of Ludoska Street is supplied from his own well.
According to the data from February this year, the test wells on Palic are only some of the 776 active oil and gas wells on the territory of Vojvodina. Along with that number, there is the worst drinking water.
According to the official information of the Institute of Public Health, Dr. Milan Jovanovic Batut, in 2019, out of 43 tested water supply systems in Vojvodina, only 10 had correct drinking water. The water, they say, was cloudy, it contained ammonia, iron and bacteria. In addition, water in some parts of Vojvodina also contains toxic arsenic, and there is also methane, which is exploited in Vojvodina.
At the beginning of October 2020, a video of flammable water, which contained methane, appeared on social networks. Namely, the author of the video demonstrated how a lighter ignites a jet of water from a tap in the bathroom. The recording was made in the village of Stajicevo not far from Zrenjanin.
After the publication of this video, JKP Vodovod i kanalizacija Zrenjanin announced that the problem with methane in the water in Stajicevo, but also in Beli Blato, has existed since the water supply in these parts.
Two months later, an explosion occurred in a water factory in Zrenjanin. The incident in which two workers were injured, according to information from the factory, happened precisely because of the presence of methane in the water.
During drilling, say the interlocutors of CINS, there can be a change in the pressure in the groundwater and mixing of methane with water from different underground layers.
NIS claims that the wells do not affect the water quality.
“The construction of each well is made of several diameters of steel pipes that descend from the top to the bottom of the well. These steel pipes insulate all aquifers, that is, make the well airtight, and there is no possibility of contamination of aquifers,” they say in NIS.
On the other hand, energy expert Aleksandar Kovacevic says that the land in this part of Serbia is like a sponge.
“Take a sponge and soak it in water. Dig a straw and pull some water out of that sponge from some depth. What will happen? This other water will settle for that much.”
That is why, as he says, every drilling in Vojvodina affects what citizens drink from the fountain.
“You get gas or you get oil and what happens? That tray is filled with water. That water, for example, if you pulled oil from a greater depth, water from a shallower depth will leak down into that space and you will come to the situation that where there was water, you have a gap there and gas will enter that gap,” says Kovacevic.
Zvezdan Kalmar from the Center for Ecology and Sustainable Development (CEKOR) agrees with the claim that drilling can bother citizens.
“It is completely clear to us that the impact must be that the shooting of houses that happens, happens by subsidence, that is, there is a discharge (aquifers). And when it comes to emptying, there must be some kind of mixing,” underlines Kalmar.
The impact on the environment is important
The Provincial Secretariat for Urbanism and Environmental Protection is responsible for controlling and monitoring the state of the environment in Vojvodina. In this institution, they say for CINS that they have no information that tests have been performed regarding the impact of oil and gas wells, among other things, on drinking water in this province.
There is no strategy or plan for the management of wells in Vojvodina and their impact on groundwater confirmed in the Provincial Secretariat for Energy, Construction and Transport.
“A comprehensive strategy for the use of resources in Vojvodina is needed, which would then be the basis for building a mechanism for coordination and monitoring (of these activities). This implies major changes in financial arrangements regarding fees for the use of resources,” Kovacevic points out.
CINS journalists did not receive answers to questions about a potential strategy or research into the impact of wells on water from either the Ministry of Environmental Protection or the Ministry of Mining and Energy. There was also no comment on the claims of some citizens that the water is of poorer quality at the wells.
The example of a test well in Palic, near the house of the Mikovic family, also shows how to avoid assessing the impact of wells on the environment.
Namely, according to the Law on Environmental Impact Assessment and the accompanying Regulation, for projects related to drilling for exploration and exploitation of oil and gas, it is not necessary to prepare a study on environmental impact assessment. This study should assess what damage an activity will have to the environment and human health, as well as how to prevent or reduce it. The study is mandatory only in the case of the extraction of oil and gas.
However, as stated in that law, even with test wells, the project holder, in this case NIS, is obliged to ask the Provincial Secretariat for Environmental Protection to assess whether it is necessary to make a study or not.
After the citizens reported, the provincial inspection for environmental protection first determined in July 2020 that NIS had not asked for it until then, and then, eight months after the beginning of the works, the Provincial Secretariat ordered the company to do a study.
For energy expert Aleksandar Kovacevic, the fact that no environmental assessment studies are being done for test wells is shocking.
“He would have to do research through electronic devices, sonar, X-rays and various temperature sensors. Based on such research, he would have to have some kind of research drilling plan and already have an impact assessment study for that story,” Kovacevic believes.
NIS says that they do not need such a study for test wells according to the Law on Mining, and they add that they will make it when they receive the data from the research.
Inspector Dragan Sekulic, who instructed NIS to request an assessment of whether it should make a study, points to the strangeness of the situation, because the two laws are in conflict:
“When I appreciated the existing legislation, I appreciated that they should still do a study. In essence, in my opinion, they should always do that study when doing research.”
Frecking – Undesirable in the EU, without restrictions in Serbia
In Serbia, the method of so-called hydraulic fracturing or fracking is also used in the exploitation of natural gas and oil. It is a technology that injects large amounts of a mixture of water and other liquids under high pressure into the layers of underground rocks that contain fossil fuel reserves. The rocks break in this way, releasing oil and gas.
This technique can contaminate drinking water, because the toxic liquids used can return to the surface and reach streams or rivers, and can also mix with groundwater.
“A large amount of liquid mixture that is inserted into the well is returned to the surface. This liquid contains solutions of salts and heavy metals, even radioactive substances,” explains energy expert Miodrag Kapor.
He also talks about other problems with this way of exploitation – noise and destruction of roads and dust due to the passage of a large number of trucks.
In recent years, a large number of countries in Europe have temporarily stopped or completely banned frecking. Among them are France, Germany, Ireland and Bulgaria.
However, in Serbia, there are no restrictions for such methods, as they say in the Provincial Secretariat for Energy for CINS.
While NIS says that frecking is applied to only a few oil fields, they also say that the environmental risk has been reduced to a minimum. The oil company claims that this method is applied only after it is determined that the well does not leak liquid into the ground.
NIS is owned by the Russian company Gazprom Neft (56%), the state of Serbia (30%) and small shareholders, CINS reports.
