page_title: Isaccea
section_title: Economy
hierarchical_section_title: Isaccea / Economy
caption_attribution_description: English: Isaccea - gallery 6
context_page_description: Isaccea is a small town in Tulcea County, in Northern Dobruja, Romania, on the right bank of the Danube, 35 km north-west of Tulcea. According to the 2011 census, it has a population of 4,955.
  The town has been inhabited for thousands of years, as it is one of the few places in all the Lower Danube that can be easily forded and thus an easy link between the Balkans and the steppes of Southern Ukraine and Russia, north of the Black Sea. The Danube was for a long time the border between the Romans, later Byzantines and the "barbarian" migrating tribes in the north, making Isaccea a border town, conquered and held by dozens of different peoples.
context_section_description: The town has long been a station in the trade between the eastern Mediterranean and the continental eastern Europe. The Greeks built their first trade post around 2700 years ago and trade continued after the Roman and later Byzantine and Ottoman takeovers. In the 16th century, the town was located on the Moldavian-Ottoman border and its bazaar was one of the four most important trading posts in the Dobruja, with tradesmen coming from distant places, such as Chios or Ragusa. The main traded goods were cattle, sheep, wine, cloth and wood. The town lost its influence in the 19th century, as the sea and river transport was mostly replaced by train and later road transport and as the Danube traffic navigates on the Danube-Black Sea Canal.
  Much of the local economy is based on agriculture, especially animal husbandry and fishing. The town's farms have a number of 2595 sheep, 728 cows, 510 pigs, 240 horses and 16,000 birds. Industry is based on extraction of rock from a nearby quarry and woodworking, a tobacco processing factory and a winery.
  Since 2004, the town is also home for a beluga reproduction research station, financed by the Romanian state. The world's first in vitro fertilisation research station for the beluga, it is fish farm, but also raises beluga to be freed into the Danube, freeing around 3000 belugas.
  The town is also a port on the Danube, having two mooring places for ships. It is mostly used for loading cereals and stone onto cargo ship.
  Isaccea is the entry point in Romania of the Isaccea-Negru Vodă gas pipeline (built between 2000-2002 to replace a smaller pipeline built in the 1980s) linking Ukraine and Bulgaria, bringing natural gas from Russia to Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. It has a diameter of 1200 mm and a capacity of 28 billion m³/year. The town is also the entry point of the 400 kV Isaccea-Vulcăneşti electrical transmission line, through which Romania imports electricity from the Russian-owned Cuciurgan powerplant in the Transnistria region of Moldova.
  A sewage treatment plant is going to be built in Isaccea by 2012, funded 80.2% from the Cohesion Funds from the European Union.
caption: The Isaccea stone quarry
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