Environmental protection and remediation services,
hydrogeology and geological engineering

NIS Refinery Novi Sad

In the spring of 1999, a part of the refinery in Novi Sad was damaged by bombing during the war operation of the American army in Serbia. By that time the refinery had represented an important producer of derivates from crude oil. Until 1999 the average annual amount of processed crude oil was approx. 2.8 million of tons. The bombing caused serious damage to the process equipment, pipelines, sewerage and other facilities, and a total of approx. 74,000 t of crude oil and oil products thus leaked into the environment. (Of this amount approx. 90 % was burned, approx. 9 % leaked into the rock environment and groundwater, and approx. 1 % escaped into a discharge channel.) The state of contamination at the site of the refinery damaged by bombing can be illustrated in the following photographs.

In July 1999, approximately two months after the bombing had stopped, a work mission of a consortium of Czech firms, AZAS Invest s.r.o. Opava and GEOtest Brno, a.s., was held in the Novi Sad refinery. In September 1999, in cooperation with the staff of NIS-Rafinerija Nafte Novi Sad, a project "Assessment and Elimination of Environmental and Building Damages within the Aid in Elimination of the Aftermath of War Conflicts in the Balkans" was prepared and a protocol for the implementation of this project was signed.

Based on the results given in the Feasibility Study prepared by UNEP/BTF in April 2000, in cooperation with Novi Sad University, the project was amended in June 2000 and submitted for approval.

The project was approved by a decree of the government of the Czech Republic in November 2000, and besides the financial means provided by the Czech firms and NIS-Rafinerija Nafte Novi Sad also government funds were earmarked from the account of the Balkans recovery for a partial settlement of the environmental part of the project.

The major contractor and coordinator of the environmental part of the project within the consortium was the company GEOtest Brno, a.s., which since December 2000 started the implementation of investigation work in the places of main hotspots of contamination, especially in the area of the damaged sewer system and chambers and around the damaged process equipment (tank yards, overhead product pipelines, storage tanks, separators, and the like).

The refinery is located on the left bank of the Danube River, about 250 m from the Ratno Ostrvo water resource, which supplies the City of Novi Sad with drinking water. Geologically, the territory is formed by fluvial sediments of the Danube River, represented particularly by sands and gravel that are locally covered by flood loams. Groundwater in this area is predominantly free and in direct hydraulic continuity with surface water in the river. The geographic position of the refinery is given in the picture, which illustrates that the main subjects at risk are notably the Ratno Ostrvo water resource, the DTD channel and the Danube River, and also the Refinery staff themselves.

During the investigation work, which was carried out at the site of the refinery from December 2000 through September 2001, accomplished were the atmogeochemical survey, shallow drill-hole exploration, hydrogeological survey, soil and groundwater sampling, including chemical analyses and work evaluation.

All the investigation work was performed in cooperation with the staff of NIS-Rafinerija Nafte Novi Sad and the staff of Novi Sad University, who provided primarily the analytical part of the work.

The results of the investigation work were prepared in the final report, which also recommended a further sequence of work and determined the priorities in such a way that the individual parts of remediation work could be logically connected with each other.

The protection of the given area and particularly the water resource can only be achieved by the complete implementation of all proposed measures while respecting the given priorities. Quite a large amount of financial means is necessary to carry out the work and in particular to successfully complete it; therefore, every endeavor has been made by the staff of NIS-Rafinerija Nafte and the firms of the consortium to acquire funds from various resources. For the years 2002 and 2003 a support was acquired from the UNEP funds, which are expended on projects related to the recovery of the Balkans. Large financial means were also received from the Czech government. In November 2002, it thus started the work connected with remediation in the most contaminated eastern and south-eastern parts of the refinery, the inspection and reconstruction of the sewer system, the completion of investigation work in the western and south-western parts of the site, and the like. The work flow is directed in such a way that the Ratno Ostrvo water resource is permanently protected and that the priorities, established on the basis of the results of investigation work, are observed while taking into consideration the acquired funds.

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GEOtest Brno, a.s., Smahova 112, 659 01 Brno tel.: 548 125 111*, 548 125 308, fax: 545 217 979, e-mail: trade@geotest.cz