A leader of the Bolivian Confederation of Peasant Workers (CSUTCB) is in Ireland this weekend to visit the local people who continue to resist Shell’s experimental gas pipeline in Rossport and to demand that the Irish government investigate the role of Shell’s security company IRMS in the attempt to start a civil war in Bolivia. Meanwhile in the wake of the An Bord Planala decision Shell’s dangerous experimental pipe has been exposed as just that and many people are starting to question the wisdom of giving the energy corporations 420 billion of oil and gas for next to nothing.
(Pic: An IRMS guard at the Shell compound in June)
A couple of weeks ago Dublin Shell to Sea finished work on the ‘All the Facts’ leaflet some 120,000 of which are now being printed. The basic idea to to try and get mass awareness of the facts of this struggle and in particular the ‘Great Oil & Gas Give-away.’ This is what Shell to Sea are calling the deal that has been given to Shell and other corporations under which they will pay almost no tax and no royalties on the vast wealth in gas and oil that lies in Irish waters and that they have been given by the Irish state.
The campaign against Shell’s inland refinery and high-pressure pipeline near Rossport in Co Mayo has been long and extraordinary, inspiring communities everywhere. Local residents began their campaign in 2000, adopting the name Shell to Sea in early 2005. Tactics have ranged from High Court actions, planning objections and lobbying politicians to grassroots campaigning and civil disobedience.
yal Dutch Shell, Statoil, Exxon Mobil and other global corporations will be taking billions of euro out of the country in the next couple of decades. In other countries they would have to give the majority of this money to the State, but not in Ireland. In 1987, then Minister Ray Burke, later jailed for corruption, abolished the State’s 50% share and all royalties.
In order to break the resistance of the inhabitants of Erris to the Shell experimental gas pipeline dozens of people are now being prosecuted. Belmullet District Court is in the second day of a special 3 day session to carry out Shell’s prosecutions. But things are not going Shell’s way, of the 16 people being prosecuted in yesterdays session only one prosecution resulted in a fine.
As we wind down after the struggle against Shell’s pipeline ship the Solitaire I’m using this blog post to bring together the bits of audio and video I recorded during that struggle and which have already been published as comments to articles on indymedia.ie. In the next days I’m also going to trawl through my old web site and transfer over reports I wrote on the Shell to Sea struggle from a couple of years back to this site which will give a pretty complete archive of what I’ve produced. Shell got the pipeline into the bay but the next cycle of struggle will be the toughest for them as they try and run it through Rossport itself to link up to the refinery.
n experimental gas pipeline