Violations Revealed in “Eco-oil” LLC.

On April 27, the civil movement “Gavigudet” wrote a letter to the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture, requesting public information. In the letter we were asking from the Ministry to inform us whether the secondary oil refining plant “Eco-oil” LLC was currently operating and to provide the court decree on the violations of the enterprise.

On December 8, 2019 our movement held a demonstration against the construction of “Eco-oil” LLC, as the factory of same profile exploded in Marneuli in 2017 and a fire spread within a radius of 150 meters. Accordingly, we did not consider it to be advisable to build a similar enterprise within a radius of 200-300 meters from the settlement, as there was the risk that the same would be repeated in Rustavi. Despite this, the plant was still built and numerous violations have been revealed based on 2021 inspection reports; although it is not clear from the Ministry answer whether “Eco-oil” LCC is currently operating.

It is clear from abovementioned court decree, that the Department of Environmental Supervision conducted a scheduled inspection on November 5, 2021, on which the inspection report has been drawn up on December 29. The inspection revealed “change in operating conditions of the production technology for the activities, determined by the environmental decision, that is not reflected in EIA report and is considered to be the subject to the screening procedure defined by the Environmental Code”. In total, scheduled inspection revealed several dozen violations, to which, according to court record, plant representative partially agreed.

In “Eco-oil” LLC were revealed violations, such as:

– There are no precautionary, forbidding or pointing signs on relevant places throughout the perimeter of the plant in order to guarantee the peoples’ safety.

– No single production area is equipped with the fire-fighting equipment.

– There are no specific sections separated and roofed and properly set up for the hazardous waste. The enterprise has not signed the agreement with the third part, that would be responsible for the waste export. The facts of chaotic placements of various hazardous and non-hazardous waste in the open air has been detected; including: sand contaminated by oil products, gravel, plastic products, etc.

– The enterprise does not control the harmful substances, emitted into the ambient air.

– The company has not carried out instrumental measurements of noise levels at the border of the enterprise.

– The company does not carry out instrumental measurements in the spray pipe, directing the residential areas, in order to monitor the spread of combustion products in the ambient air.

– The company was unable to re-create the harmful substances monitoring plan for the operation phase of the plant and submit it to the Ministry before the plant would be set up, on the basis of which it would than monitor the ambient air.

– The company does not provide technical control of equipment involved in the technological cycle.

– The company has not elaborated the waste management plan.

– The company had not informed the Ministry about the starting, completing or putting into the operation phases.

Based on these and many other violations, the court fined the company a total of GEL 19, 500 and 7 days were set for the payment period. Unfortunately, it is not clear from the answer of Ministry whether the enterprise paid the fine.

Although there was an explosion of a similar enterprise in 2017, as we mentioned above, there is no fire-preventive plan in the enterprise, thus the safety of the employees is not ensured and the production process completely deviates from the current standards. When it comes to an enterprise of a profile where there is a chance of an explosion and damage to human health, we think, special attention should be paid to ordering the process and the mitigation measures should be carried out in practice in a way to minimize the abovementioned threats.

We have already sent a letter to the Department of Environmental Supervision, asking whether the enterprise is operating as of today and whether the fine, imposed by the court, has been paid.

The article was prepared in the framework of the project “Defending Our Right to Clean Air in Rustavi” which is implemented with the support of the “European Endowment for Democracy”.