Ballsh
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Ballsh ballshi |
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Coordinates: 40 ° 36 ' N , 19 ° 44' E |
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| Basic data | |||
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| Qark : | Fier | ||
| Municipality : | Mallakastra | ||
| Height : | 200 m above sea level A. | ||
| Residents : | 7657 (2011) | ||
| Telephone code : | (+355) 0313 | ||
| Postal code : | 9308 | ||
 View over the city and the Mallakastra hills from the south |
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Ballsh ( Albanian also Ballshi ) is a small town in southern central Albania with 7657 inhabitants (2011). It is the seat of the municipality of Mallakastra , at the transition from the Myzeqe plain to the southern Albanian hill country, 20 kilometers southeast of Fier . Ballsh is the center of Albania's oil production and the location of the country's largest refinery . The town is also the local center of the region.
The most important trunk road to southern Albania, the SH 4 , ran through the town for a long time. Today the route runs further west in the Vjosa valley . Passenger service on the branch line from Fier to Ballsh was discontinued in 2000, and freight trains run to the nearby refinery.
The local football club KS Bylis Ballsh plays in the top league .
history
Middle of the 4th century BC The Illyrians founded a city on a hilltop, later Byllis , which was surrounded by a fortification wall and became the main town of the Illyr tribe of the Byllions. From the middle of the 2nd century BC It belonged to the Roman province of Macedonia with the then name Colonia Byllidensium . Roman column remains were found in Ballsh, but the settlement of Ballsh five kilometers north of Byllis and away from the traffic routes has not been secured in Roman times. The last heyday of Byllis was in the 6th century AD under the Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian I. It must have been an important Christian center, because the remains of early Christian basilicas were found in a dozen smaller communities within a five to ten kilometer radius of Byllis discovered.
In Ballsh (then Baletium ) the foundations of a three-aisled basilica from the beginning of the 6th century were uncovered on the through road in the village. Floor slabs made of marble from the Greek island of Evia and columns made of Egyptian granite were found. There is a small new church on the site.
Byllis was not rebuilt after the devastating Slav invasion in 586 AD. It remained deserted afterwards, the residents and also the bishop moved to Ballsh. Byllis was looted, stone remains can be found as building material in Ballsh. In the 11th or 12th century, the spaces between the rows of columns in the basilica were walled up. According to excavation results, there must also have been a monastery in Ballsh in the Middle Ages. In fact, a monastery of St. Demetrius is mentioned in 1219 in the place now called Glavinitza . In the 14th century the place is listed as a bishopric, a German bishop was visiting from 1351 to 1357.
Under the territorial rulers of those years and up to the time of Skanderbeg in the 15th century, the Ballshas family clan also gained in importance. Their sphere of influence extended far beyond the Mallakastra region.
economy
There are five oil deposits around Ballsh. The largest oil field in Albania, Marinza near Patos a few kilometers north of the city, was discovered in 1957. The Ballsh oil field, which was only discovered in 1966, is even closer . The refinery in Ballsh has a theoretical processing capacity of 1 million tons of crude oil per year, the only other refinery in Fier of 0.5 million tons. These quantities were only reached by 1980: in 2000 Ballsh had 300,000 tons, less than a third of capacity. In 2005 the total production in the country was only 382,000 tons.
The reasons for the low production quantities are, on the one hand, outdated conveying methods and, on the other hand, outdated processing plants. The Ballsh Refinery was built in 1978 using technology from the 1960s.
In 2006 the now privatized operating company ARMO decided to invest € 2.6 million in a new part of the plant. Another company responsible for drilling technology, which was spun off from the state-owned Albanian Petroleum Corporation (APC) in 1999 , is Servcom , which was also privatized . In addition, there is the previously state-owned Albpetrol , which undertakes the crude oil production.
environmental issues
The diesel and gasoline produced in Ballsh are cheaper for the end user than imported fuel. The reason is the poor quality due to too high a sulfur content. This is 6% for the crude oil extracted in the area. Most of the sulfur escapes into the air with the natural gas released during extraction .
Soil pollution is more sustainable in the entire region. Depending on the study, 5–7% technical losses are stated. This amount of crude oil disappears in production, through leaks in transport lines, in the refinery and in storage. The drinking water supply around Ballsh is at risk, as is the Gjanica River due to insufficient treatment of the refinery wastewater . This drives oil dirt into the Adriatic .
Various joint ventures with companies in Great Britain, Canada and Germany have not yet been able to address the cause of the problems.
Web links
- Photo of the oil refinery near the city
- Energy Information Administration US government energy data
- ARMO: Ballsh Deep Oil Refinery
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Ines Nurja: Censusi i popullsisë dhe banesave / Population and Housing Census - Fier 2011 . Results Kryesore / Main Results. Ed .: INSTAT . Pjesa / Part 1. Adel Print, Tirana 2013 ( instat.gov.al [PDF; accessed April 14, 2019]).
- ^ HSH Railway Network - Station and Route List
- ↑ Oliver Gilkes: Albania - an Archaeological Guide . IBTauris, London 2013, ISBN 978-1-78076-069-8 , Ballsh, pp. 61 ff .
- ↑ James Pettifer: Albania & Kosovo - Blue Guide . A & C Black, London 2001, ISBN 0-7136-5016-8 .
- ↑ Peter Bartl: Albania. From the Middle Ages to the present . Verlag Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 1995, ISBN 3-7917-1451-1 , p. 239 .
- ^ Robert Elsie: The Christian Saints of Albania, Balkanistica 13, 2000 Online (PDF; 222 kB)
- ↑ United Nations Environment Program UNEP
- ↑ http://www.eva.ac.at/publ/enercee/al/supplybycarrier.htm (link not available)
- ↑ In Patos, only a fifth of the amount in 1990 was mined in 2000, 400 tons compared to 2000 tons per day
- ^ Energy Profile of Albania. Energy Policy, Major Market Players, Energy Sources. In: South-east European Industrial Market. November 2009, accessed December 13, 2015 .
- ↑ cf. UNEP. The technically outdated drilling rigs force them to be erected at intervals of sometimes less than 100 meters.