Oil Prospecting Seen as Latest Risk to Lake Sevan

March 13, 2015
By Arpi Harutyunyan

Right now, only exploratory work is planned, but environmentalists
fear for the worst if anything is found.

IWPR – Environmentalists in Armenia are alarmed by the government’s
decision to allow oil prospecting in an area that includes Lake
Sevan,the region’s largest freshwater resource.

The ministry for energy and natural resources has granted exploration
company Blackstairs Energy Armenia permission to begin an11 million US
dollar search for oil and gas deposits in 2015-16.

Blackstairs Energy Armenia, a locally-registered firm,was set up in
2008 as a joint venture between Canadian company Vangold, Ireland’s
Blackstairs Energy and the Armenian government.

According to Vangold, the company has obtained “very encouraging” data
that provide “compelling evidence for the existence of significant
accumulations of hydrocarbons within the licence area”. That area,
known as the Central Depression, is located in central and southern
Armenia and includes part of Lake Sevan.

Near the lakeside, prospecting work is planned at the villages of
Hayravank, Tsaghkashen and Noradus.

The lake is protected by a special law passed in 2001 which forbids
any activity liable to damage its ecosystem. Environmentalists have
frequently raised the alarm about projects that seem to contravene at
least the spirit of the law, from fish farming to gold mining
andover-use of Sevan’s waters.

“As long as it’s just exploration, we can’t say the law is being
broken,” Silva Adamyan, coordinator of the Public Environmental
Alliance, told IWPR. “But if oil reserves are found, the next step has
to be production. Drilling operations on Lake Sevan’s territory is
prohibited by law, as it would have devastating consequences for the
lake.”

Adamyan insisted that Armenia’s green activists would be happy if oil
reserves were discovered, as long as it was not at the expense of Lake
Sevan.

Unlike its oil-rich neighbour Azerbaijan, Armenia has few known
natural fuel sources and has to import natural gas from Russia and to
a lesser extent Iran.

While the neighbouring Azerbaijan has rich deposits of oil,
environmentalists doubt that Armenia possesses untapped reserves.

Ruben Movsisyan, the director of Yerevan State University’s Centre for
Sustainable Development, is pretty sure that the prospectors will not
find anything commercially significant.

“In the Soviet era, wells were drilled atArmavir and a little gas was
found. And a very small oil deposit was found in the village of
Voghjaberd on the road to Garni. Foreign organisations then drilled a
well in Garni to a depth of about 3,200 metres, but nothing was
found,” he told IWPR.

However, Blackstairs Energy Armenia says data collected in the Soviet
period is unreliable.

“The research conducted from 1947 to 1990 was… done using rudimentary
geological and geophysical technology,” the company said in a
statement.

The company insists that its activities are designed to minimise any
environmental impact.

Kristine Vardanyan, ofBlackstairsEnergy Armenia, said that since only
exploratory work was to be conducted at this stage, using safe
methods, there was no cause for concern.

Tehmina Arzumanyan, spokesperson for the Ministry of Nature
Protection ,stressed that permission had been granted only tolocate
potential oilfields, not to drill in them.

“If, as a result of exploration, it turns out that there is gas or oil
underground in Armenia, the company must seek an additional expert
study or apply for a license to drill wells in the area,” Arzumanyan
told IWPR.

But Karine Danielyan, chair of the Association for Sustainable Human
Development, argued that the application which Blackstairs Energy
Armenia submitted to carry out prospecting was incomplete.

“This document does not contain any assessment of the impact on the
environment; it is merely descriptive.Instead of proposing safety
solutions, it only expresses good intentions,” Danielyan said.

Movsisyan pointed out that as a country with no oil industry, Armenia
had never developed legislation to govern the pollution and other
risks that extraction would entail.

Environmentalists argue that decisionsof such momentous importance
need to be discussed more broadly. Liana Asoyan, coordinator of the
Aarhus Centre in Gavar, says public hearings have been held in all the
regions where exploration is planned, but civil society organisations
were not invited.

“We were not informed that these hearings were going on,” she told
IWPR. “So the Aarhus Centre in Yerevan and Gavar organised a
meetingitself, and invited company representatives and
environmentalists.We made our position clear – that Lake Sevanshould
be left alone,and that they should not even plan any drilling work
there.”

Asoyan says it is unclear what will happen if oil is found.

“We’ve been assured that there won’t be any drilling in Lake Sevan.
But if they do find oil, what would the company be interested in other
than extracting the reserves?” she said.

Arpi Harutyunyan is a freelance journalist in Armenia.

Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR)