Shell to Sea Solidarity Action in Scotland

Between 7am and 8am this morn­ing (16th Feb­ru­ary 2007) while the city was still in dark­ness, a num­ber of activists shut down eight dif­fer­ent Shell petrol sta­tions in and sur­round­ing the city cen­tre of Edin­burgh. This action was a sol­i­dar­i­ty action for the Shell to Sea cam­paign in Ross­port, Coun­ty Mayo and also to tar­get Shell for being a major con­trib­u­tor to glob­al warm­ing and cli­mate change. The action was pur­pose­ly planned to coin­cide with the action tak­ing place at the Bal­linaboy refin­ery site on the same morn­ing.

Shell logo burningBetween 7am and 8am this morn­ing (16th Feb­ru­ary 2007) while the city was still in dark­ness, a num­ber of activists shut down eight dif­fer­ent Shell petrol sta­tions in and sur­round­ing the city cen­tre of Edin­burgh. This action was a sol­i­dar­i­ty action for the Shell to Sea cam­paign in Ross­port, Coun­ty Mayo and also to tar­get Shell for being a major con­trib­u­tor to glob­al warm­ing and cli­mate change. The action was pur­pose­ly planned to coin­cide with the action tak­ing place at the Bal­linaboy refin­ery site on the same morn­ing.

The activists turned the emer­gency shut down levers so the pumps stopped work­ing and the sta­tion was unable to sell any­more fuel. They left a shell shaped skull and a note at each sta­tion (stuck on with Shell to Sea stick­ers) stat­ing;

“Shell has been shut down today in Sol­i­dar­i­ty with the inno­cent peo­ple around the world that have been sub­ject to their bul­ly­ing and use of vio­lence.

Shell is a mas­sive con­trib­u­tor to Glob­al Warm­ing and Cli­mate Change – the great­est threats to life on earth

The com­mu­ni­ty of Ross­port, on the West Mayo coast in Ire­land, are under siege due to Shell’s desire to get their hands on the gas reserve. Shell is build­ing an extreme­ly dan­ger­ous onshore gas pipeline through Ross­port and a mas­sive refin­ery destroy­ing this beau­ti­ful coast and endan­ger­ing hun­dreds of lives.

This has to stop now. The inno­cent peo­ple of the area are fight­ing for sur­vival against an evil multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion. They fear for their lives, their chil­dren and their com­mu­ni­ty.

Join us in the fight against Shell – Boy­cott Shell and make them with­draw this dis­as­ter­ous pipeline sheme from Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land”.

There were no police involved and there­fore no arrests were made. Some sta­tions remained shut down for a num­ber of hours, and unfor­tu­nate­ly some were start­ed up again quite quick­ly.

The fact that one or maybe more of the emer­gency shut down levers were faulty and did not stop the pumps imme­di­ate­ly adds to Shell’s track record of being a dan­ger­ous com­pa­ny with no regard for health and safe­ty. These levers are meant to be used in an event of fire or emer­gency (or sol­i­dar­i­ty actions!) and the fact that they are faulty and dif­fi­cult to access means that in an emer­gency the sta­tion would not shut down and the pumps would con­tin­ue to dis­pense fuel.

Lat­er that after­noon, all of the tar­get­ed sta­tions were up and run­ning again. But the mes­sage was clear­ly left and the sta­tions were shut down and had emp­ty fore­courts dur­ing the morn­ing rush hour.