Africa-Italy pipeline digs up French World War I battleship
The Italo-Algerian company building a deepwater pipeline between North Africa and the Continent have said a French
World War I battleship has been discovered astride the transit route by surveyor Fugro.
The pipeline-building consortium Galsi said the vessel is the dreadnought Danton -- torpedoed off Sardinia by Central
Power forces in 1917, eight years after its launch. The Central Powers were Germany, Austro-Hungary and then later
the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria.
It's not the only World War battlefield seeing oil and gas industry activity these days. Off northern Norway, at the
North Cape, Norwegian oil company StatoilHydro and France's Total have, as operators, been responsible for the safety
of Transocean rigs drilling over wrecked German, British, Canadian and Norwegian shipping lost in battle against the
German battle cruiser Scharnhorst in the WWII.
In Indonesia, too, exploration work has picked its way through the sites of fierce battles between Japanese and
Anglo-American naval and marine forces. In the North Sea, divers have told the seabed is still one big "ammunition
dump", with pipelines criss-crossing the decaying hulls of weapons transports.
Overseeing the safety of the Sardinian pipeline through legal entity Galsi are Sonatrach, with 41.6 % in the project
company, Edison (20.8 %), Enel (15.6 %), Gruppo Hera (10.4 %) and Sardinian institutional investor Sfirs (11.6
%).
Their 850-km pipeline will be the Med's deepest by reaching 2,825-metre depths.
