On the last day of his brief spell in power the replacement Minister of Energy Pat Carey signed the consents on the final stage of Shell’s experimental gas pipeline in Erris despite continued opposition from the local community and people all over the island concerned with both safety and the Great Oil & Gas Giveaway. It is increasingly clear that the haste on pushing the project thorough is because the Bellanaboy refinery is intended to take not just the relatively small deposits of the Corrib field but also the hundreds of billions of oil and gas found off the atlantic coast.
On the last day of his brief spell in power the replacement Minister of Energy Pat Carey signed the consents on the final stage of Shell’s experimental gas pipeline in Erris despite continued opposition from the local community and people all over the island concerned with both safety and the Great Oil & Gas Giveaway. It is increasingly clear that the haste on pushing the project thorough is because the Bellanaboy refinery is intended to take not just the relatively small deposits of the Corrib field but also the hundreds of billions of oil and gas found off the atlantic coast.
Shell to Sea which has spent the last decade campaigning against the Corrib project in its current form described the sign off as the "last act of a corrupt and desperate regime".
Speaking for Shell to Sea Maura Harrington stated: "By signing off on these latest consents for Shell, Pat Carey has facilitated the €580 billion giveaway of Irish natural resources at a time of national impoverishment due to the actions and negligence of the outgoing government. He was a temporary minister with no mandate from the people: it was the final act of a corrupt and desperate regime. We are not surprised however – Frank Fahey similarly signed off a foreshore licence for Corrib in 2002 on his last day in office"
Pat Carey had replaced Green Party minister Eamonn Ryan after the Green’s had resigned from government causing the general election. Eamonn Ryan had posed as an opponent of the Corrib project while in opposition but once in power became the minister who imposed the project, mobilising hundreds of Gardai and the Navy in order to do so. The rushing through of the consents at the last moment of the dying government is just another chapter in a long history of dodgy deals, secret meetings and corruption associated with the Great Oil & Gas Giveaway by which 540 billon plus in oil & gas reserves is being given to energy companies with no royalties charged and one of the lightest tax regimes of anywhere in the world.
Dublin Shell to Sea are holding an organising meeting on March 12th for people in Dublin who want to continue resistance to the project during its final leg.
First published on WSM.IE