Anti-Shell actions at Rossport, Eire

2nd June 2009

Ross­port: Cause­way at Shell com­pound ‘washed away’ by Shell to Sea action

Part of the Shell cause­way extend­ing into the sea at Glen­gad was yes­ter­day evening removed by Shell to Sea pro­test­ers. This was in protest at the ille­gal block­ing of access to the pub­lic beach and to oppose the forc­ing of this unsafe project on the local com­mu­ni­ty and the give­away of Ire­land’s nat­ur­al resources.

A group of about 30–40 peo­ple wad­ed into the sea to gain access to the cause­way, and pro­ceed­ed to remove a large amount of the stone which makes it up. They were con­front­ed by a 70 Shell secu­ri­ty after about half an hour of the action, at which point the peo­ple left. An upbeat and play­ful mood pre­vailed over a beau­ti­ful evening.

The Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp has again tak­en up res­i­dence in Glen­gad, and after a very suc­cess­ful week­end, includ­ing a num­ber of actions, will build up the resis­tance to Shell over the com­ing weeks and months.

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Mon­day the 1st of June saw the arrival of a mul­ti­tude of assort­ed ves­sels to Broad­haven bay. The boats, which are sub­con­tract­ed by The Roy­al Dutch Shell com­pa­ny (Shell), are attempt­ing to pre­pare for works on the con­tro­ver­sial Cor­rib gas project.

Today how­ev­er, their progress has been sig­nif­i­cant­ly impaired by res­i­dent Shell to Sea activists that had already gath­ered a small, albeit for­mi­da­ble, fleet of kayaks, ready to deploy with­in short notice. The Kayaks were birthed from the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, which direct­ly over­looks the vicin­i­ty that the Shell boats have been oper­at­ing in the past twen­ty-four hours.

Cur­rent­ly there are diverse assort­ments of ves­sels con­verg­ing in the once pris­tine bay; the major­i­ty of these are either car­ry­ing out, or assist­ing, dredg­ing and sur­veil­lance oper­a­tions. An Gar­da Siochana, have also been sight­ed patrolling the work zone, along with two black ribs; The Lau­ra Emi­ly accom­pa­nied by its twin the Gall­tee, which are both brim­ming with men dressed in black mil­i­tary fatigues.

Works, tak­ing place ear­li­er this after­noon, came grind­ing to a com­plete halt when twelve activists in kayaks broke through the secu­ri­ty line that con­sist­ed of nine high speed secu­ri­ty boats. The activists man­aged to tact­ful­ly cir­cum­nav­i­gate secu­ri­ty boats for approx­i­mate­ly two and a half hours, which effec­tive­ly halt­ed Shell dredg­ing works for a con­sid­er­able peri­od of time.

After numer­ous attempts by Gar­dai to secure an arrest, they even­tu­al­ly man­aged to drag one man from his inflat­able Kayak. The man, in his fifties, is report­ed to have been halt­ing a dredger con­vey­ing silt into a barge, and thus stop­ping after­noon work.

This cur­rent work being car­ried out by Shell is like­ly to sig­ni­fy the imped­ing arrival of the Soli­taire; at over 400 meters long the Soli­taire is the largest pipe lay­ing ves­sel in the world, and its expect­ed pres­ence in Co. Mayo will undoubt­ed­ly pro­voke for­mi­da­ble resis­tance.

At this point in the project, all dredg­ing works car­ried out in Ross­port are like­ly to be held as sacro­sanct by Shell’s board of direc­tors, and con­verse­ly seen as detri­men­tal by the Irish pub­lic.