The 1,600 Olive Trees Holding Up a $5.2 Billion Pipeline
What was once a lonely fight over local farms has become a populist protest against globalization.
A security service member patrols the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline worksite in Melendugno in the province of Lecce, Italy.
Photographer: Giulio Napolitano/BloombergOn a recent visit to a construction site near an olive grove along the coast of southern Italy, a reporter’s phone buzzed with an ominous text message: “We know you’re there.”
The text came from one of the people fighting to stop the final construction of a 4.5 billion-euro ($5.2 billion) natural gas pipeline that’s designed to run right beneath the olive trees, an area farmed for centuries and now surrounded by barbed-wire fencing. They have been working in shifts, monitoring progress of a project meant to carry gas from the Caspian Sea and provide the cornerstone of a European Union plan to wean itself off Russian gas.