A week of Hell for Shell

28th August 2010

After Mon­days suc­cess­ful action stop­ping work for 3 hours the camp was inspired and many actions fol­lowed.

Tues­day marked the start of an oral hear­ing into whether Shell can lay the gas pipe line through the estu­ary. This gave locals and campers the chance to ques­tion Shell and Bord Pleanála about the legal­i­ty of gas pipe line and oth­er issues sur­round­ing the pipe.
The bore holes that Shell are drilling are to extract infor­ma­tion that will deter­mine whether a tun­nel can be made for the gas pipe line to run through, how­ev­er the fact that this infor­ma­tion hasn’t been col­lect­ed yet did not affect Shells appli­ca­tion or claim that the pipe line will be com­plete­ly safe.
This oral hear­ing com­bined with an action packed week put pres­sure on Shell from all direc­tions.

Wednes­day saw a group occu­py the Shell’s secu­ri­ty com­pound that turned into a pic­nic and rev­e­la­tions of IRMS read­ing mate­r­i­al (mer­ce­nary uk) and eat­ing habits (loads of bis­cuits).

As Thurs­day morn­ing broke a group set off towards the sun­rise (and the drilling rigs) occu­py­ing secu­ri­ty and stop­ping work­ers from get­ting onto the plat­form for over an hour. After the suc­cess of this action a com­mu­ni­ty walk out hap­pened lat­er in the day when low tide allowed peo­ple to walk out under the plat­form. Despite peo­ple gath­er­ing under the plat­form drilling con­tin­ued, which is a breach of health and safe­ty rules.

Attempts to stop the plat­forms being moved on Fri­day were foiled by over zeal­ous secu­ri­ty. Despite many coura­geous endeav­ours to climb the legs of the plat­form secu­ri­ty turned vio­lent and many were thrown to the ground.

Beat the Bore­holes Cam­paign con­tin­ues and we wel­come any­one want­i­ng to get involved.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2010/0825/1.…html