Come up to Rossport! Shell Starts Work on onshore pipeline

22nd July 2011

Shell have brought a dig­ger and a port-a-cab­in into the exist­ing tem­po­rary com­pound in Augh­oose. This is in prepa­ra­tion to start build­ing a per­ma­nent com­pound in Augh­oose from which they hope to start dig­ging the tun­nel for the pipeline which will con­nect Bal­linaboy refin­ery to the 70 kms of off­shore pipeline. They will come in full force on Mon­day 25th July, please come up to Mayo and show your sup­port! A mass day of action is planned for Fri­day 29th July, but come up any time.

22nd July 2011

Shell have brought a dig­ger and a port-a-cab­in into the exist­ing tem­po­rary com­pound in Augh­oose. This is in prepa­ra­tion to start build­ing a per­ma­nent com­pound in Augh­oose from which they hope to start dig­ging the tun­nel for the pipeline which will con­nect Bal­linaboy refin­ery to the 70 kms of off­shore pipeline. They will come in full force on Mon­day 25th July, please come up to Mayo and show your sup­port! A mass day of action is planned for Fri­day 29th July, but come up any time.

There were over 70 IRMS (Shel­l’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny) present to secure the two trac­tors with trail­ers bring­ing in the equip­ment. The pri­vate secu­ri­ty blocked off about 300 metres of the pub­lic road to allow the trac­tors to enter the com­pound. Sev­en peo­ple from the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp ran down to try and inter­vene but a long line of IRMS had the road blocked off, and sev­er­al peo­ple were assault­ed by IRMS on the pub­lic road. Two peo­ple had to receive med­ical atten­tion. One per­son has made a state­ment to the gar­daí regard­ing the assaults, but the gar­daí were quite reluc­tant to receive the state­ment.

The dig­ger and the port-a-cab­in entered the com­pound, how­ev­er with­in 15 min­utes over 20 pro­test­ers from the camp and local res­i­dents had gath­ered out­side the com­pound, and no fur­ther work was car­ried out for the rest of the day.

Many of the IRMS secu­ri­ty mem­bers seem to be new, and ear­li­er this week mem­bers from the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty camp observed a group of 12 IRMS mem­bers who seemed to be on their first shift. Peo­ple went up to talk to the secu­ri­ty guards, explain­ing to them why peo­ple are against the Shell project and talk­ing to them about why they are there protest­ing. Many of the new secu­ri­ty guards were vis­i­bly uncom­fort­able, and seemed quite affect­ed by what they were hear­ing.

This over-show of force today may have been some sort of train­ing ses­sion for the new IRMS secu­ri­ty before the real work starts on Mon­day. When deal­ing with some of the pro­test­ers who had been speak­ing with the secu­ri­ty guards, it was obvi­ous­ly much more dif­fi­cult for them to use the force they’d been ordered to use on peo­ple. One pro­test­er from the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp explained that “it felt so much more empow­er­ing to talk to them on a human lev­el and tell them why I was there, than to get beat­en up by them. When the lads I’d been speak­ing with were ordered to remove me, they were bare­ly able to touch me. It was a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence than I’ve had with IRMS in the past.”

This activ­i­ty on Fri­day fol­lows a week of con­tin­u­ous actions at the Bord na Móna site in Shramore out­side Ban­gor Erris. Shell intends use this site to store the 125,000 tonnes of peat meant to be removed from the bog at the Augh­oose site. The 500,000 tonnes of peat removed from the Bal­linaboy refin­ery site in 2006/7 was stored at Shramore. In the past few weeks pri­vate con­trac­tors have been extend­ing the road net­work at Shramore to accom­mo­date the Shell project. This week pro­test­ers from the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp have turned their atten­tion to the Bord na Móna site and have been occu­py­ing trucks and dig­gers, block­ing the front gates with con­crete lock-ons, and putting bar­ri­cades in the roads on-site. Here is a brief run-down of the week:

Tues­day: Four peo­ple put their arms into con­crete lock-ons in front of the gate at the Shramore site, block­ing work for three and a half hours. No arrests were made.

Wednes­day: About 20 peo­ple entered the Shramore site, climb­ing on top of trucks and dig­gers to stop them work­ing, block­ing the front gates, and gen­er­al­ly shut­ting down all works on site. The gar­daí arrived on scene but even­tu­al­ly left with­out mak­ing any arrests.

Thurs­day: Work start­ed at about 3pm at the Shramore site, and work was stopped about 30 min­utes lat­er. Pro­test­ers chained the gate shut to pre­vent trucks from deliv­er­ing the grav­el need­ed to extend the road net­work on the site. The vehi­cles with­in the site which were active were all suc­cess­ful­ly occu­pied, includ­ing three trucks, two dig­gers and one crane. The occu­pa­tion con­tin­ued for the rest of the work­ing day, no arrests were made.

Fri­day: Work start­ed just after 7:30am but was prompt­ly halt­ed by pro­test­ers block­ing the front gate and sub­se­quent­ly occu­py­ing the few machines which had start­ed work. Just before mid­day word arrived that work at the Augh­oose site had begun, so most peo­ple left. Those who stayed saw that work did not start up again till about 2pm and by 3:30pm anoth­er group of pro­test­ers had returned to halt works again for the rest of the day.

In con­clu­sion, very lit­tle work was accom­plished at Bord na Móna’s peat depos­i­to­ry site in Shramore this week. Shell began work in Augh­oose on Fri­day, and the local com­mu­ni­ty is gear­ing up for a fine resis­tance next week when Shell comes in full force. Get up here and show your sup­port! A day of mass action is planned for Fri­day the 29th of July, but come up soon­er if you’re able.

To get in touch with the camp: 00353 85 114 1170 or rossportsolidaritycamp[at]gmail[dot]com