Residents of the coastal city of Bourgas will approve or reject the construction of the Bourgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline in a referendum on September 2 2007, municipal council decided.

Regional Development and Public Works Ministry will carry out an information campaign before the referendum, mediapool.bg reported.

Deputy Regional Development and Public Works Minister Kalin Rogachev said that the agreement for the construction of the pipeline between Bulgaria, Greece and Russia had already been signed and the referendum will fail impacting its progress.

Bulgarian Cabinet had signed only political agreement for administrative co-operation for the execution of the project. No one had said that Bulgaria’s ecological legislation would be violated, Rogachev said.

Ecologists in the country and rightist opposition parties already said that the project was economically and ecologically unbeneficial for Bulgaria, mediapool.bg said.

Bourgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline will transfer Russian oil through the port of Bourgas to Alexandroupolis in Greece. Bulgaria will earn nearly $35 million per year from transfer taxes.