The marine skyline could change completely in a year and a half. From the golden beaches of Monopoli, a city in the lower Bari area devoted to tourism, you will see 500 meters from the coast, north of the Tramontana pier, a field composed of five buoys – plus three moorings on the quay – on which tanker ships will come and go, able to handle 1.5 million tons per year of biofuels, vegetable oils, and derivatives. The new buoy field together with the sealine and underground pipeline connecting for 3 kilometers to the coastal depot in the northern industrial area of the Apulian town, proposed by Magazzini Generali Italiani srl (part of the Marseglia group), could once again change the economy of the town which today records almost eight hundred thousand tourist presences since the beginning of the year and 2,137 registered accommodation facilities. The integration between the growing tourism – which would also require strengthening waste collection -, environmental protection, and the new energy infrastructures proposed by the Marseglia group requires special attention. And politics is called upon by citizens through a purpose committee “Save Monopoli and the Sea” to provide answers, because as lawyer Filippo Grattagliano, among the founding members of the Committee, explains, it is now necessary to “absolutely stop the ongoing EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) application” at the Ministry of Environment and Energy Security. The Committee will submit observations for the EIA procedure open at the Ministry of Environment by the deadline of August 29.
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Construction progress status, July 2026
The project, thanks to the Single Zes authorization (number 8 of 2024) “of 21 tanks with a capacity of about 4,250 cubic meters, for a total of 89,250 cubic meters,” according to the proposing company, will bring several benefits such as the elimination of over 20,000 trucks per year for the transport of oil from the ports of Monopoli and Brindisi, and the reduction of over 2 million kg/year of CO2 equivalent. All for an investment of 50 million and a realization time of about a year and a half. Magazzini Generali Italiani srl aims to create an integrated system for the transport and storage of vegetable oils. The company (230 direct employees) specializes in three areas: processing oil for food use; biodiesel production; energy creation from bioliquids and biomass. Hence the need to activate “an offshore buoy field for the mooring of tankers intended for the transport of biofuels, vegetable oils, and their derivatives, connected via sealine and underground pipeline to a coastal depot.” But there are many doubts about the environmental impact and the health of citizens.
The project (2nd step) – Buoy field and pipeline route
The delicate balance between tourism and fishing economy, environmental beauty, and industrial development must be examined by the Ministry. Already the Apulia Region with three distinct investigative acts – a note from the Parks and Biodiversity Protection Service of October 2025, an opinion from the EIA/VAS Technical Commission of March 2026, and a subsequent confirmation note of June 2026 – judges the project incompatible with the environmental and landscape protection of the area. And then there are procedural issues: “The tank farm and the buoy field–pipeline system are, by the proponent’s own admission in the disclosure documentation, a single intervention articulated in two phases,” explains lawyer Grattagliano: “a ‘1st step’ (the tanks in the photo), already authorized and under construction, and a ‘2nd step’ (the sea connection), currently under evaluation.” The Committee argues that this breakdown is not allowed: “European and national legislation requires that functionally connected works be evaluated together, to avoid a project of overall relevance ‘escaping’ a full environmental assessment. In this case, the ongoing evaluation does not take into account the impacts of the 21 tanks already under construction: emissions, fire risk, land consumption, cumulative effects. The project plans also document a third component – the direct connection between the depot and the group’s production plants – which the Committee requests to also be included within the scope of the evaluation. Furthermore, the absence of some project documents that the proponent declares to have sent to the Ministry but are not available on the public environmental assessment portal is highlighted.
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Porta Vecchia, Monopoli
Just as qualifying the depot as a strategic national energy infrastructure does not comply with the regulations relating exclusively to coastal mineral oil depots. “The same regulation that allowed the rapid authorization of the tank farm (the ‘Single ZES regime for the South’)” explain the citizens of the Committee, “excludes energy plants and infrastructures from its scope and prohibits the splitting of the authorization process of the same intervention into titles acquired at different times.”
Rendering of the buoy field
Environmental risk
The Committee also points out in its observations that: “The area where the buoy field would be located falls near the special conservation area ‘San Vito-Barletta Posidonia meadow’ which protects the Posidonia oceanica meadows (habitat 1120) and coralligenous reefs (habitat 1170).” The proponent claims to place buoys and anchors in a “sandy clearing” free of vegetation and proposes in any case a possible transplantation of Posidonia to compensate for any impact. The area is also protected as a coastal strip under the Cultural Heritage Code and the Regional Landscape Plan, which has already expressed an incompatibility assessment, and the potential underwater archaeological site is at risk.
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