The Irish Times – Monday, October 31, 2011

LORNA SIGGINS, Western Correspondent

THE IRISH Federation of University Teachers has expressed serious concern about a warning of possible prosecution issued to an academic at NUI Maynooth by the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission.

The warning relates to alleged “obstruction” of the Garda Ombudsman’s continuing inquiry into taped comments made by gardaí after a Corrib gas protest on March 31st last.

The federation’s general secretary Mike Jennings says that the Garda Ombudsman’s approach “illustrates the lack of protection for both bona fide researchers and journalists” in protecting sources.

It also “runs against any principle of open inquiry and transparency in a democratic society”, Mr Jennings said.

The warning was issued verbally by the Garda Ombudsman to NUIM lecturer Dr Bríd Connolly, following a decision by her to supervise deletion of material from a video camera which was sought by Garda Ombudsman officers investigating the Corrib tape incident. The academics at the centre of the case say the material was unrelated to the inquiry.

The video camera was university property, and had been on loan to postgraduate student Jerrie Ann Sullivan, who was one of two women arrested by gardaí at Glengad on March 31st last.

The video camera was confiscated by gardaí travelling in a separate car to that transporting the two women to Belmullet Garda station. They discovered taped material after the camcorder was returned to them on their release.

An interim Garda Ombudsman report into the incident, published on July 28th by Minister for Justice Alan Shatter, said that the investigations’ transcript from the camcorder upholds the allegations the camera, still switched on, recorded gardaí joking about raping the women if they refused to give their name and address.

It also recorded them talking of “deporting” one of the women who was believed to be an American citizen, “enlisting the support of the Garda National Immigration Bureau to harass them and [making] other comments of an inappropriate nature”, the report said.

The interim report found no evidence of a criminal offence having been committed by any of the five gardaí subsequently interviewed, and no evidence of any breach of discipline by three of the gardaí.

It said that disciplinary issues “may arise in the case of two Garda members”, who were confined to desk duties after the investigation was initiated on April 5th last as a matter of public interest.

NUIM sociology lecturer Dr Laurence Cox, one of four university staff interviewed by the Garda Ombudsman, said that he was concerned about the situation where those who were victims in this case were now being “treated as perpetrators”.

Postgraduate student Ms Sullivan had been questioned for 4½ hours, he noted. Dr Connolly, who could not comment yesterday, was interviewed under caution.

Deletion of unrelated material only came about after two separate offers were made by the university to the Garda Ombudsman to agree on deletion by a neutral third party, Dr Cox said.

Ms Sullivan and her supervisors had a duty to abide by the university’s own research ethics principles and the ethical code of the Sociological Association of Ireland, he pointed out.

The Garda Ombudsman said it would not comment beyond confirming that the investigation was ongoing, and it was moving “as speedily as we can to a conclusion”.

NUI Maynooth referred yesterday to its statement of July 29th last when it acknowledged that deletion of college research material was “inadvisable”, but the “individuals concerned” were “acting out of concern” for student welfare, confidentiality of a research record, and a “genuine belief that the particular material deleted was not relevant to the inquiry”.

SOURCE ARTICLE

The project is currently 10 years behind schedule, projected costs have risen from $800 million to $2.5billion, Statoil has had to sell off its retail outlets in Ireland because of the damage to its reputation and internationally the reputation of Statoil has suffered due to its partnership in the Corrib field.

CORRIB GAS PROJECT

The award winning documentary film about the controversial Corrib Gas pipeline – ‘The Pipe’ – will have its Norwegian premiere this Monday in Oslo at the Cinemateket presented by the Neptune Network:
http://www.neptunenetwork.org/.

Attendees will include people from industry, politics, media and academia, who will participate in a post screening discussion with director of the film Risteard Ó Domhnaill and County Mayo fisherman Patrick O’Donnell

(see photo right, courtesy of John Monaghan).

http://www.neptunenetwork.org/profiles/blogs/cinemateket-statoils-overgrep-mot-irsk-befolkning-vises-frem-i-pr

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Pipe-The-Film/270493470810

Staoil has a 36,5 per cent interest in the Corrib gas field north-west of Ireland. The Corrib field development is operated by Shell and has been marred by controversy since 5 local landowners were jailed in 2005 for 94 days for opposing the laying of an onshore high pressure raw gas pipeline through their land to the proposed refinery 9km inland.

The project is currently 10 years behind schedule, projected costs have risen from $800 million to $2.5billion, Statoil has had to sell off its retail outlets in Ireland because of the damage to its reputation and internationally the reputation of Statoil has suffered due to its partnership in the Corrib field.

http://www.statoil.com/en/About/Worldwide/Ireland/Pages/default.aspx

The Pipe – Synopsis

In a remote corner of the West of Ireland sits Broadhaven Bay. It is the perfect picture postcard, where the high cliffs of Erris Head and the Stags of Broadhaven stand sentry at the mouth of the bay against the mighty Atlantic, as if protecting the delicate golden sands of Glengad beach and the tiny village of Rossport, which nestles behind the dunes. However, this peaceful tranquility belies the turmoil that lies beneath, and the unique nature of the coastline which has sustained generations of farmers and fishermen, has also delivered to Shell and Statoil the perfect landfall for the Corrib Gas Pipeline.

In the most dramatic clash of cultures in modern Ireland, the rights of farmers over their fields, and of fishermen to their fishing grounds, has come in direct conflict with one of the worlds most powerful oil companies. When the citizens look to their state to protect their rights, they find that the state has put Shell and Statoil’s right to lay a pipeline over their own.

The Pipe is a story of a community tragically divided, and how they deal with a pipe that could bring economic prosperity or destruction of a way of life shared for generations.

press images:

www.thepipethefilm.com/press/
username: press
Password:  pipe1

Trailer and links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMSLuxuf_iE

www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/Featured_Videos/ID=1590885523

www.thepipethefilm.com

www.facebook.com/pages/The-Pipe-The-Film

www.thepipethefilm.com/main-sect/review-in-variety-magazine/

After the Government granted 12 firms permission to look for oil and gas around Ireland this week, Peter Flanagan and Donal O’Donovan ask if the next big oil field is really on our doorstep

Thursday October 20 2011

IRELAND has watched for years as neighbours in the UK and Norway reaped the benefits of staggering oil strikes in the North Sea.

This week, efforts to emulate that success here stepped up a gear when the Government granted licences to 12 companies from four countries to search for hydrocarbons off the west coast.

Five of the winning companies — Ireland‘s Providence Resources and San Leon Energy, and the UK’s Chrysaor, Serica Energy and Sosina Exploration — already have a presence in Ireland; while the other seven licence winners — Canadian firm Antrim Energy, Bluestack Energy and Petrel Resources from Ireland, the UK’s Europa Oil & Gas, Two Seas Oil & Gas and First Oil Expro, as well as Spanish firm Repsol Exploration — are new to Irish waters, although another arm of Repsol recently announced it was entering into another licence off Ireland with Providence.

In all, 13 new licences were granted as companies search far and wide for new reserves.

Oil prices

High oil prices look to be here to stay as the fear that we may be reaching “peak oil” seems to get worse every year.

Russia has already staked its claim to the Arctic’s natural resources, while the mantra of “drill baby, drill” — usually in the Alaskan wilderness, a protected nature reserve — has been taken up by right-wing politicians in the United States as a solution to the country’s dependence on “foreign oil”.

Given this sort of geopolitical climate, it is no surprise there was a record number of applications for licences to explore off Ireland this year.

If the exploration works, and it is commercially viable to produce oil off Ireland, the rewards could be enormous. But how viable is Ireland as a centre for oil production, and how will the country benefit if private companies are going to take most of the profits?

The history of exploration around Ireland is a chequered one, to say the least. In nearly half a century, almost 200 wells have been drilled around Ireland but only one field — Kinsale — has been a commercial success while Corrib’s problems have been well documented.

In truth, a variety of factors have played against sustained development around the island. Most of the areas of interest for explorers — and the focus of the licences issued this week — are about 200km off the west coast in what is known as the “Atlantic Margin”.

Phillips Petroleum struck oil there as long ago as 1978 but the low oil price for most of the ’80s and ’90s, as well as logistical difficulties — the nearest hub for exploration is Aberdeen — have counted against developing the area. Many of those negative factors have now been overcome, however.

Energy Minister Pat Rabbitte said there could be up to 50 billion barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) around Ireland, but while one report estimated there were 10 billion BOEPD “yet to be found”, we really have no idea how much oil there is and, until exploring is done, we won’t know.

Most of the Atlantic Margin play involves drilling in deep water — up to 2,000 metres — in the middle of the Atlantic. These are not hospitable conditions at the best of times and present unique, and costly, challenges to drilling.

Market sources estimate the cost of exploring a single licence could run to $175m (€126m), with no guarantee oil will be found. When oil was between $7 and $10 in the early ’80s, it was simply not worthwhile to pursue it.

Viable drilling

With an oil price of close to $100 now the norm, however, drilling has become economically viable. As well as that, North Sea oil appears to have peaked and instability in the Middle East makes a country with a stable political environment like Ireland more attractive for prospecting.

“[The record number of applications for licences this year] probably reflects in part the flexible nature of the options but also the worldwide trawl that is under way by the industry for new oil and gas basins that can be developed,” says Davy Stockbrokers‘ Job Langbroek.

The other big change has come in technology. Advances in surveying equipment allow prospectors to estimate underwater reserves with much greater accuracy than before, and at lower cost.

These changes have attracted the likes of Providence Resources, which is the biggest player in the offshore Ireland space. As well as out and out prospecting, the company is going back over old discoveries and prospects, with new technology and modern geological techniques.

Apart from the economic and technology developments, the confidence in Ireland as an oil producer also comes from good results elsewhere in the Atlantic.

In the south, Tullow Oil has struck black gold with the massive Jubilee Oil Field off the west coast of Africa, and only last month the Irish-led company announced it had discovered oil off the coast of French Guiana on the east coast of South America.

That discovery helped re-inforce the “Atlantic Mirror” theory, which suggests large reserves of hydrocarbons are available on both sides of the Atlantic.

Reserves

In the North Atlantic, the Labrador Coast off Canada has huge proven oil fields. Therefore, the Mirror theory suggests, there should be large reserves on the eastern side of the ocean — right where Ireland is.

Another attraction of the Atlantic Margin is the quality of oil available. The international standard is Brent Crude.

When reporters say oil rose to, say, $105 a barrel yesterday, they are referring to the price of pure Brent. If a field produces oil with a lot of impurities, such as waxiness or high sulphur content, then the producer will get less for it.

Atlantic Margin oil, in particular that from the massive Porcupine basin — an area about three times the size of Ireland — is believed to be very close to Brent, with an especially low sulphur content making it very attractive to prospectors.

If that is the case, however, why weren’t the “supermajors”, as the biggest oil companies in the world are known, involved in this year’s round of Atlantic licences?

The lack of applications from an Exxon or a Chevron-Texaco has been taken in some quarters as evidence of a lack of credibility in Ireland as a drilling site, but the well documented problems at Corrib may well have made high-profile companies think twice before moving into Ireland, says Mr Langbroek.

In any case, Repsol is a top-tier firm with interests around the world. Exxon, while not involved in this round, bought into Providence’s Dunquin Prospect off the Kerry coast in 2006 and drilling will take place there by 2013 at the latest. Mr Langbroek believed the licensing round was “a solid success and compares very well with previous rounds”.

“It is quite usual in the industry for smaller companies to act as pathfinders and idea generators for the larger companies. If these companies can generate targets, the larger companies will ultimately follow,” he added.

If explorers do start producing large quantities of oil here over the next few years, how would Ireland benefit?

There have been calls from Socialist TD Joe Higgins and others for the Government to create a national exploration company so we can keep the profits from natural resources ourselves, but could the Government afford to put up to $175m (€126m) into a hole in the ground? Mr Rabbitte is adamant it can’t.

“We don’t have the investment capacity to do it ourselves but the tax-take is very significant,” he said when he made this week’s announcement.

Ireland’s tax regime for oil exploration is far more favourable to companies, compared with our closest neighbours. The lower tax has been controversial over the years but the Government insists it reflects the realities for the industry here.

Tax rates

If firms do succeed in getting oil ashore, they will pay a standard 25pc tax, with a maximum 40pc tax rate on the most profitable wells, a rate set in 2007. The rules are being reviewed by an all-party Oireachtas Committee.

In any case, it will be some time before companies, and Ireland, start to reap the benefits from the licences granted on Monday. Tullow struck oil off Africa in 2007 in conditions similar to here. From that point, it took four years before the field was producing oil commercially.

Monday’s announcement was the latest significant move in a calculated gamble that has been decades in the making. The next moves will happen far from the eyes of the public, in the boardrooms of The City and Wall Street as the winners raise capital to finance exploration, and in the murky and bitterly cold waters of the North Atlantic.

It will be some time before Ireland can report a staggering oil strike to match its near neighbours.

FULL ARTICLE

Friday, 07 October 2011

Liamy MacNally

The days are getting shorter and the lawyers are tripping over themselves in the noontime darkness.  Their cathedral minds are busy.  The Four Courts silver spoon still shines with looming cases.  The law does not always bring justice, even if the ladder of law has no top or no bottom!

A High Court judicial review of permissions granted for ongoing work on the Corrib Gas project is due to be heard on October 11.  The judicial review was sought by An Taisce and some local residents into permissions granted by An Bord Pleanála and the then acting Minister for Communications, Energy & Natural Resources, Pat Carey, for the pipeline and the Plan of Development.  The outcome could have serious implications for the Corrib project.

More legalese: “Strong rumours here in Erris, Co Mayo (beside Corrib gas development) that the project will grind to a halt following an up-and-coming court case involving a local contractor, Shell and the local police force (Garda).”

The royaldutchshellplc.com website had this on its home page last Friday.  This website, subtitled, ‘News and information on Royal Dutch Shell Plc’ has nothing whatever to do with the said company.  A disclaimer states: “This is not a Shell website nor is it officially endorsed by or affiliated with Shell in any way.”  The site was founded by 94 year-old Alfred Donovan, the former Chairman of the Shell Corporate Conscience Pressure Group.  He is assisted by, among others, his son, John, who has been involved in the gasoline retailing industry for over 40 years.  John is best known for his long association with the Royal Dutch Shell Group, firstly for devising marketing campaigns on an international basis and more recently as a long-term Shell shareholder and critic of Shell senior management.  The site is a mine of information on Shell’s activities worldwide.

Less than a year ago, Éamon Gilmore promised an immediate review of oil and gas licensing terms if elected to Government.  Speaking in June 2011 Minister Pat Rabbitte stated: “To successfully attract a greater share of mobile international exploration investment to Ireland, we need a number of basic requirements.  Firstly, we must maintain a realistic tax regime that reflects our relative attractiveness as a place to invest in petroleum exploration.

Secondly, we need an approach to licensing that is designed to attract new companies to Ireland and to encourage those companies already here to increase their activity levels.  The 2011 Atlantic Margin Licensing Round, which closed yesterday, is an initiative designed to achieve this.  While it is very early days in terms of evaluating the applications received under the Round, I welcome the fact that a total of 15 applications have been received.

The country is bust yet there is little recognition of its natural resources assets. Where are last year’s opposition voices?  Former politicians (none of whom is facing charges in court) reap huge pensions while cutbacks affect workers and non-workers.  More and more, life in Ireland is demanding a moral response from Government.  Maybe Government is really about the survival of the richest…

SOURCE ARTICLE

We hear from our sources…

“Strong rumours here in Erris, Co Mayo (beside Corrib gas development) that the project will grind to a halt following an up-and-coming court case involving a local contractor, Shell and the local police force (Garda). The word is that the CEO and others are heading for the exit over this matter.”

WARNING: These are rumors…

Attention Royal Dutch Shell Plc: If you confirm by email that any information printed under this headline is categorically untrue, it will be removed immediately.

The inspector general found an e-mail from some dork at Shell Pipeline to a woman in the federal royalty office, asking her to join him at a tailgate party before a Houston Texans football game: “Have you and the girls meet at my place at 6 a.m. for bubble baths…

baltimoresun.com

Viewpoint: Sex, drugs and natural gas royalties

By Carl Hiaasen
September 17, 2008

People always say the Bush administration is in bed with the oil companies, but it turns out to be literally true.

According to the Interior Department, some government officials in charge of collecting oil and gas royalties smoked pot, snorted cocaine and had sex with employees of big energy firms.

Meanwhile, the rest of us were getting screwed at the gas pump.

Three reports delivered last week to Congress portray “a culture of ethical failure” in which employees of the federal Minerals Management Service often accepted gifts from oil and gas interests, steered lucrative contracts to cronies and partied hard with those with whom they did business on behalf of the U.S. taxpayer.

The MMS collects about $10 billion annually in royalties from energy companies that drill offshore and on federally owned lands. Beside the IRS, it’s one of the biggest sources of government revenue.

During the Bush years, the agency has faced harsh criticism for failing to vigorously pursue millions of dollars in outstanding or potential royalties. One controversial program, called royalty-in-kind, allows energy companies to pay the government in gas and oil instead of dollars.

According to the inspector general’s report, the royalty-in-kind office of the MMS was rife with “substance abuse and promiscuity.” Certain fun-loving employees were known as the “MMS Chicks” by energy firm employees, who would generously invite the women to lively social events.

Oil and gas companies named in the reports are Chevron, Hess, Shell Pipeline and Gary-Williams Energy. They paid for MMS workers to attend PGA golf tournaments, professional baseball and football games, ski trips, a Toby Keith concert, paintball-shooting events and “treasure hunts,” whatever that means.

The inspector general found an e-mail from some dork at Shell Pipeline to a woman in the federal royalty office, asking her to join him at a tailgate party before a Houston Texansfootball game: “Have you and the girls meet at my place at 6 a.m. for bubble baths and final prep. Just kidding.”

This stuff would be a whole lot funnier if the country’s energy policy weren’t a disaster and gas weren’t $4 a gallon. The Republicans’ renewed lust to open more offshore leases might not bring down the price of crude, but it would keep the good times rolling at the Interior Department.

Apparently the plan is to tailgate our way to energy independence.

Interestingly, while at least a dozen former and current MMS employees were named in the reports, the Bush Justice Department has chosen to go after only one, Jimmy W. Mayberry.

Last month, he pleaded guilty to a felony conflict-of-interest charge for arranging a juicy consulting contract for himself, as sort of a retirement gift.

The woman who helped Mr. Mayberry hatch this scam was Lucy Q. Denett, then the associate director of minerals revenue management. She’s also married to Paul Denett, who until recently was the top procurement honcho in the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Mrs. Denett has retired from the Interior Department for personal reasons and won’t be prosecuted. She told investigators she’d made a “very poor” decision by helping her pal Mr. Mayberry rig the consulting contract. No kidding.

Another Bush hack who likely will escape punishment in the scandal is Gregory W. Smith, former program director of the royalty-in-kind office. The inspector general said that Mr. Smith wrongly used his government position to market a private tech-services firm to gas and oil companies, and that the firm paid him $30,000.

Mr. Smith, now working for a Denver oil company, has refused to publicly discuss the allegations.

The report also accuses him of taking gifts from energy industry representatives, having sex with two of his subordinates and buying cocaine on several occasions from his secretary and her boyfriend.

Who says that being a bureaucrat is dull work?

Such colorful revelations shed some light on the mysterious energy task force assembled by Vice President Dick Cheney at the president’s direction, shortly after he took office.

Mr. Cheney has stubbornly refused to tell American taxpayers what was decided or who participated in these important meetings, though it’s known that many major players were involved, including those geniuses at Enron.

No wonder the vice president is so secretive about what took place. Obviously, these weren’t serious policy meetings; they were toga parties, with Mr. Cheney dressed up as Bluto from Animal House.

In their wildest dreams, the boys from big oil couldn’t have imagined how much fun the next eight years would be – sex, drugs and “treasure hunts.”

Party on, dudes. Drill your brains out.

Carl Hiaasen is a columnist for The Miami Herald.

As well as an investigation of his complaint, Mr Murphy said a public inquiry should be held into the entire policing operation around the Shell project and the working relationship between Shell’s private security contractors and the Garda.

CONOR LALLY, Crime Correspondent

DUBLIN SOCIALIST Party MEP Paul Murphy has lodged a formal complaint with the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission over alleged mistreatment by gardaí policing a protest in Co Mayo.

Mr Murphy claims he was subjected to excessive force by gardaí during the protest over Shell’s Corrib gas project last Thursday.

He said he was left with bruising and was unable to chew properly for a number of days after gardaí used “pressure point” techniques on him when removing him and other protesters.

He has submitted photographs of himself, taken by others, while being removed from a sit-down protest on a roadway. Some of the photos show small bruises, which Mr Murphy said he sustained when being subjected to the techniques.

These tactics are used by the Garda and prison officers to subdue prisoners or people who pose a public order risk. They involve using fingers to apply pressure to certain areas of the body, including behind the ear, aimed at physically subduing a person for a short period to allow their arrest or removal from a public order incident.

Mr Murphy’s complaint is that the force used against him and others was excessive and disproportionate to any risk posed by the protest on the day. He described the actions of some gardaí as “outrageous”.

“Garda brutality has been a persistent feature of the situation in Rossport since the end of 2006, when the area was effectively militarised with hundreds of gardaí coming into the area,” he said.

“At that time, protesters including myself were subjected to serious assaults by the gardaí, including being thrown into ditches, beaten with batons and deliberately punched.”

He said that during the incident last Thursday he was one of a group that sat on a roadway to block gardaí from driving a cherrypicker into a location at Erris near Aughoose. Gardaí were trying to remove a protester who had climbed onto the roof of a Shell lorry at one of the company’s sites.

The works were part of a construction project to lay a pipeline that will carry sludge with gas from the seashore to Shell’s onshore plant for refining into gas.

Mr Murphy, who travelled to Mayo as part of a Socialist Party delegation, claims gardaí were aggressive when they moved in, and made no attempt to use any approach apart from an extreme one.

He says he was picked up by four or five gardaí, had the area behind his ear and his left jaw pressed hard and also suffered blows to his ribs and head, while having his ears twisted with some force.

He was among a group of between 15 and 20 protesters removed from the road by gardaí and put behind Garda lines, though they were not arrested.

Mr Murphy lodged his complaint yesterday afternoon at the offices in Dublin of the Garda ombudsman. He said he had no confidence his complaint would progress in any meaningful fashion, pointing out that of the 111 complaints lodged in relation to the policing of the Shell to Sea protests, 78 were deemed inadmissible by the ombudsman and seven were sent to the DPP.

“Most strikingly, only one file was sent to the Garda Commissioner’s office calling for disciplinary procedures. To date, no disciplinary action has been taken.”

A spokesman for the ombudsman said it did not comment on individual cases.

As well as an investigation of his complaint, Mr Murphy said a public inquiry should be held into the entire policing operation around the Shell project and the working relationship between Shell’s private security contractors and the Garda.

He said the working relationship between the Garda and Shell security guards was too close and went “well beyond” the co-operation between the Garda and private security firms at events such as concerts and sporting fixtures.

SOURCE ARTICLE

The Irish Times – Monday, August 29, 2011

OF ALL the big questions facing the State, few have more profound long-term implications than the management of our natural resources. Official estimates suggest a potential reserve of hydrocarbons equivalent to 10 billion barrels of oil off the west coast alone. Were all of this to be recovered, it would be enough to supply Ireland’s gas and oil needs for a century.

With the stakes so high, it is imperative that the State gets its approach right. It has to balance the need to get companies to spend vast sums drilling wells with the public interest in maximising benefits from resources that belong to the Irish people. There is some urgency. A new round of applications for exploration licences in Atlantic waters closed at the end of May. Fifteen applications were received – the largest number of any licensing round to date and an indication that Irish waters are an increasingly attractive prospect.

Once these licences are issued, the holders will be, in effect, entitled to develop any finds they make under the current terms. It is widely acknowledged that these terms are extremely generous to the energy companies and produce a very low return for the State. An Indecon report, commissioned by the State in 2007, noted that “the current fiscal regime . . . yields among the lowest government take in the world”. Since then, the regime has changed slightly, with the potential for a higher tax take on very profitable fields.

By international standards, however, the terms remain very generous. Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Pat Rabbitte argues, in line with his Fianna Fáil and Green Party predecessors, that such terms are necessary to stimulate exploration activity. He may well be right, but the issue is too important to be left solely to the judgement of an individual minister.

The economics of energy and the technologies for recovering oil and gas from deep waters have changed so radically that it is time for a proper public review of this whole issue. That review should be undertaken by the Oireachtas committee on communications, natural resources and agriculture. It should be both open and open-minded, seeking not least to give the public some clarity on key questions. What is the status of the many discoveries made in recent decades that are still “under assessment”? How well do the current terms guarantee security of supply? Do they ensure the maximum amount of employment for Irish workers?

Mr Rabbitte’s position in this regard seems oddly contradictory. In April, when Éamon Ó Cuív suggested such a review in the Dáil, Mr Rabbitte replied that “I will agree. I will accept the spirit of his proposition.” Subsequently, however, he said he would go ahead and issue the licences under the current round, regardless of what the Oireachtas committee decides to do. This is an absurd approach to such a serious question: decision first, debate afterwards. It is not the way a healthy democracy considers issues of vital public importance. There should be a pause in the issuing of licences until the end of the year, to allow the Oireachtas committee to conduct a rigorous review.

SOURCE ARTICLE

Issued by Shell to Sea
Wednesday 20 th July 2011 – 11am

Shell to Sea protest halts Shell’s peat works for second day

At 10.30 am this morning Shell to Sea campaigners stopped work for the second day in a row at the Bord na Móna site at Shramore, near Bangor, Co. Mayo. They are currently on the site and occupying machinery.

The site is currently preparing to store the 125,000 tonnes of peat that Shell will attempt to remove in the coming weeks. While rural communities are faced with a turf cutting ban, Shell is allowed to remove 125,000 tonnes from an area surrounded by EU Special Areas of Conservation, this on top of the 600,000 tonnes of peat that was removed during the creation of Shell’s refinery in Ballinaboy. A banner saying “Turf Cutting – One law for people, One law for Shell” was hung on the gates of the Bord na Móna site.

‘It’s shocking to see Bord na Móna – a state owned company – facilitating Shell, despite the fact that Ireland does not own any of Corrib gas and so cannot benefit. Indeed a recent report by the Commission for Energy Regulation stated that Corrib Gas coming on-stream would actually raise gas prices for the Irish public’ said Shell to Sea spokesperson Maura Harrington.

‘Shell’s so called environmental management plan was released to the public yesterday but completely fails to address the serious breaches of EU law. Shell also continues to ignore the community’s concerns about the health and safety of the high pressure raw gas pipeline.’

Shell has announced its intention to begin peat removal shortly despite the An Taisce legal challenge.

*This figure is based on the estimate, issued by the Department of Communications, Energy & Natural Resources (DCENR) in 2006, that the amount of recoverable oil and gas in the Rockall and Porcupine basins, off Ireland’s west coast, is 10 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent). Based on the average price of a barrel of oil for 2010 of $79, this works out at $790 billion, or €580 billion. This does not take account of further oil and gas reserves off Ireland’s south & east coasts or inland. The total volume of oil and gas which rightfully belongs to Ireland could be significantly higher. Also, as the global price of oil rises in the coming years, the value of these Irish natural resources will rise further.

Irish resistance against Shell Corrib project continues