work on a new oil terminal on the Black Sea coast has led to renewed concerns over environmental safety in one of Russia's most beautiful regions. At a ceremony at Yuzhnaya Ozereika, near Russia's main Black Sea oil port, Novorossiisk, Russian and Kazakh government officials and shareholders in the Caspian Pipeline Consortium ( cpc ) faced protests from a noisy group of around 100 demonstrators.

"We are for a resort but against an oil port,' read one banner. "We vote for a clean sea,' read another. us oil major Chevron is the main shareholder in the huge Tengiz oilfield in Kazakhstan, and owns 15 per cent of the cpc , which is building a pipeline to carry the oil to the new port at Yuzhnaya Ozereika. cpc said it will rigorously observe all federal and regional laws on environmental protection. cpc spokesperson Natalya Prutkovskaya said 12 per cent of the group's us $2.3 billion budget was earmarked for the environment. However, the environmentalists are not impressed. "We consider it a very dangerous project,' Oganes Targulyan of Greenpeace said.